TheSPRNIftR 

HISTORY 





BY-JAMES- C~FERNXLDH: 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE SPANIARD 
IN HISTORY 



JAMES C^FERNALD 

AUTHOR OF "THE NEW WOMANHOOD," " ENGLISH SYN- 
ONYMS, ANTONYMS, AND PREPOSITIONS," ETC.; EDITOR 
OF THE " STUDENTS' STANDARD DICTIONARY." 




FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY £ <* <* 
NEW YORK AND LONDON ^ <£ <£ <£ £ 1898 




2nd COPY, 
1898, 



iES RECEIVED- 



8001 



Copyright j 1898 
By FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 



Printed in the United States of A merica 



PREFACE 

It is not the purpose of this little volume to 
give a chronological history of Spain, but simply 
to show in clear light, through leading incidents 
of Spanish history, some leading traits of Spanish 
character which have profoundly influenced the 
destiny of that people, and deeply concern all 
who have dealings with the Spanish race among 
the family of nations. The author believes that 
it is possible to gain an estimate of a nation by 
swift characterization at critical moments of its 
history, which shall be more just, as well as 
more vivid, than any that can be gained by mo- 
notonously tracing its chronology. 

There will be found a striking unity in the 
character of the Spanish people, as exemplified at 
different periods of their long and eventful his- 
tory. This unity they themselves are proud to 
recognize. Admiral Cervera, in his recent address 
to his men, just before leaving the Cape Verde 
Islands, exhorted them thus : " Then, when I lead 
you to battle, have confidence in vour chiefs ; and 

3 



PREFACE 

the nation, whose eye is upon you, will see that 
Spain to-day is the Spain of all time ! " 

But that something is wrong with Spain must 
be apparent, it would seem, even to her own 
people. How el::e should her once splendid, 
world-wide empire have so fallen into decay? 
Now her possessions have dwindled to a frac- 
tion of the Iberian Peninsula and three muti- 
nous colonies, one of which already lies under 
American guns. Spain herself has declined to 
the position of a fourth-rate European power, 
scarcely able to bolster up by ruinous loans her 
exhausted finances. Here are effects for which 
there is surely a cause. That cause is not in any 
desolating foreign invasion, and must be in some 
qualities of the Spanish people. What are some, 
at least, of those fateful traits, it is believed that 
this brief sketch will make evident. 

The lesson of interest to the American people 
is that the Spaniard, as he has shown himself in 
history, is not one to be trusted with the control 
of a weak or subject race. The sword which has 
been drawn in behalf of the oppressed of Cuba 
must not be sheathed till Spanish power has 
ceased to touch with its blight the Western 
World. 

James C. Feenald. 

New Yokk, May 18, 1898. 
4 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

The Spanish Race ,7 

CHAPTER II 
Rise of the Spanish Monarchy 20 

CHAPTER III 
The Inquisition . .35 

CHAPTER IV 
The Conquest of Granada 59 

CHAPTER Y 

Expulsion of the Jews and Moors . r , .70 

CHAPTER YI 

The Spaniard in the West Indies . . , .78 

CHAPTER YII 

The Spaniard in Mexico and Peru . . , .84 

5 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER VIII 

PAGE 

The Spaniard on the Throne .... 95 



CHAPTER IX 
The Spaniard in the Netherlands .... 104 

CHAPTER X 

The Spaniard in the Philippines v .. " • 117 

CHAPTER XI 
The Spaniard in Cuba ...... 126 

CHAPTER XII 

The Spaniard on the Sea . 133 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 



THE SPANISH RACE 

Diversity of Origin — The Iberian Peninsula : its 
Situation ; its Great Elevated Plateau ; its Moun- 
tains, Plains, and Sea-Coast; its Climate and 
Products — The Celtic, Phenician, Greek, Cartha- 
ginian, Roman, Frank, Vandal, Visigothic, and 
Saracenic Invasions and Settlements. 

To understand the Spanish people of to-day, 
we must have some knowledge of the long and 
eventful history that has made them what they 
are. A people of mingled blood, sprung from a 
greater variety of stocks than any other Euro- 
pean nation, they still bear the stamp of their 
diverse ancestry, and of the stormy scenes amid 
which those various races were, to a certain de- 
gree, welded into one. 

Their land is the Iberian Peninsula, which 
forms the southwestern portion of the European 
continent, of which about eleven thirteenths, or 
all except the strip held by Portugal on the 



8 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

western coast, is included in the modern king- 
dom of Spain — a country more than twice the 
size of Great Britain, its greatest length being 
560 miles, and its greatest breadth about 650 
miles, its area exceeding 190,000 square miles. 
Its shores are washed by the Bay of Biscay, the 
Atlantic Ocean, and the Mediterranean Sea, the 
coast-line on the Atlantic measuring 605 miles 
and that on the Mediterranean 712 miles. Safe 
and spacious harbors are found both on the At- 
lantic and Mediterranean shores. 

The interior of the country is chiefly a vast 
table-land, or elevated plateau, extending from 
the Calabrian mountains on the north to the 
Sierra Morena on the south. The general eleva- 
tion of this great plateau is from 2,000 to 2,700 
feet, and its extent more than 90,000 square 
miles, or nearly one half of the territory occupied 
by Spain. 

On the north, the range of the Pyrenees, 
stretching from the Mediterranean to the Bay 
of Biscay, 270 miles, and including many lofty 
summits from 9,000 to upward of 11,000 feet in 
height, divides Spain from France. This is one 
of seven great mountain ranges or Cordilleras of 
the country, all of which have a general easterly 
and westerly direction, and of which the southern- 
most, the Sierra Nevada, running parallel to the 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 9 

Mediterranean, rises to loftier elevations than are 
found in any other mountain system of Europe, 
except the Alps. The chief rivers are the Douro, 
Tagus, Guadiana, and Guadalquivir, flowing into 
the Atlantic, and the Ebro, flowing into the Medi- 
terranean. 

As might be supposed from the configuration 
of the country, the climate of Spain is exceed- 
ingly various. On the high table-lands, even in 
summer the nights are decidedly cold, while the 
winters are often very severe ; snowfalls are fre- 
quent, and at Madrid (2,150 feet above the sea- 
level) skating is a common amusement in De- 
cember and January. In the maritime provinces 
of the north and northwest, monthly roses bloom 
in the gardens at Christmas. In the southern 
provinces along the Mediterranean, a subtropical 
climate prevails. Much of the central plateau 
consists of vast, treeless plains, swept by violent 
tempests in winter and in summer desolated by 
the scorching heat of the sun. On the highlands 
of Galicia and Estremadura are pastured great 
herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. 

The vegetable productions are more various 
than those of any other country in Europe, com- 
bining the growths of temperate and of tropical 
regions. The oak and the cork, the apple and 
the olive, the lemon, orange, and citron, vines 



10 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

yielding luscious or fiery wines, together with 
rice, sugar, and cotton, contribute to make up 
the varied produce of the Spanish peninsula, 
which, under better husbandry, might now yield 
plenteous harvests, as of old. The mineral riches 
which the Spaniard has gone to the ends of the 
earth to seek, and for which he has inflicted 
nameless cruelties on subject populations, still 
abundantly underlie the soil of his own land. 

The original Iberian population of the penin- 
sula is believed to have been overwhelmed at an 
"early period by a great Celtic invasion, the union 
of the two races forming a people known as the 
Celtiberians, with greater preponderance of the 
Celtic element in one part of the country and of 
the Iberian in another. To this land in very early 
times the Phenicians came as traders and colo- 
nists, carrying on a profitable commerce, and 
forming considerable settlements on the southern 
and eastern coasts, especially in Andalusia. The 
mineral riches of the southwestern portion of the 
coast, the " Tarshish" of the Old Testament, es- 
pecially attracted the Phenician traders, their 
" ships of Tarshish, " that made the adventurous 
voyage to that remote region, holding much the 
same place in navigation as the Spanish galleons 
or British Indiamen of the modern world. At an 
early period also a few settlements were made 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 11 

and towns founded by the Greeks. In the third 
century before Christ, the Carthaginians had 
made considerable conquests under their great 
generals Hamilcar, Hasdrubal, and Hannibal, the 
name of their chief city, Carthago Nova, being 
still preserved in the modern Cartagena or Car- 
thagena. At the same time, the Eomans had 
been establishing themselves at various points on 
or near the Mediterranean shore, and it was in 
Spain that Eomans and Carthaginians first came 
to blows in the Second Punic War, when Hanni- 
bal (218 B.C.) captured and destroyed Saguntum, 
the modern Murviedro. In 206 B.C. the Cartha- 
ginians were finally driven from the peninsula, and 
the country was constituted a Eoman province, 
under the name Hispania. But it was long be- 
fore the Eoman arms could subdue " the restless 
and impressionable tribes," that waged against 
them an exhausting and seemingly endless gue- 
rilla warfare. Eoman armies were again and 
again defeated with heavy loss, and it was not 
until the reign of Augustus (19 B.C.) that Spain 
could be said to be effectually subjugated by 
Eome. Under the Eoman dominion the native 
tribes were compelled to cease their intestine 
wars. The people adopted the Eoman laws 
and customs. The Latin language was spoken 
throughout the peninsula. The industrial pur- 



12 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

suits, which the Eomans everywhere protected 
and fostered among conquered populations, 
brought great prosperity. Flourishing cities 
sprung up, of which many still bear a semblance 
of their Latin names, as Leon (Legio), Merida 
(Emerita Augusta), Beja (Pax Julia), and Zara- 
goza or Saragossa (Caesar Augusta). " Pliny, in 
the reign of Vespasian, gave a list of three hun- 
dred and sixty cities in Spain." 1 Aqueducts, 
bridges, and amphitheaters were built, of which 
impressive ruins yet remain. Such was the fer- 
tility of the country that it was for a long time 
looked upon as the granary of Eome, while at the 
same time it was the chief source of the precious 
metals. Gibbon states that twenty thousand 
pounds of gold were annually received from three 
Spanish provinces. For the production of this 
treasure the natives were forced to labor in the 
mines for their Eoman masters, as in after- times 
Spain herself wrung mineral wealth from the 
enforced labor of the subjugated people in her 
own colonies. There was, however, this differ- 
ence : that while Eome might oppress, she did not 
destroy. She planned for long and enduring 
dominion, and wished her subjects to prosper, 
that their prosperity might steadily sustain the 

1 Gibbon : " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, " 
vol. i., ch. ii., p. 61. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 13 

wealth and grandeur not only of the Eternal City, 
but of all her vast imperial dominion. Thus for 
three hundred years Spain was the richest prov- 
ince of the Eoman empire. Education flourished, 
and famous schools and scholars arose. Among 
the distinguished authors that Spain gave to the 
Eoman world were Martial, Seneca, Quintilian, 
and Lucan. Trajan, one of the greatest of the 
Eoman emperors, was himself a Spaniard. 

It is a striking proof of the wonderful assimi- 
lating power of the conquering Eoman people, 
fusing the numerous and various conquered na- 
tions into one, that after nearly two thousand 
years, during which the country has been swept 
by so many invasions and successively held for 
centuries at a time by Goth and Saracen, even 
now the Eoman law is the basis of Spanish juris- 
prudence, while the Spanish languagQ is but a 
modification of the Latin tongue. 

" We may observe, " says Gibbon, 1 " as a sure symptom 
of domestic happiness, that, in a period of four hundred 
years, Spain furnished very few materials to the history 
of the Roman empire. 

In the year 256 a.d. the country was invaded 
and ravaged by the Franks, who, however, ob- 
tained no permanent control and seem to have 
left little impress upon the people. 

1 " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, " vol. iii. , 
ch. xxxi. , p. 307 sq. 



14 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

But at length, in 409 A.D., to quote the same 
historian : 

"The consciousness of guilt and the thirst of rapine 
prompted the mercenary [Roman] guards of the Pyrenees 
to desert their station ; to invite the arms of the Suevi, 
the Vandals, and the Alani ; and to swell the torrent which 
was poured with irresistible violence from the frontiers of 
Gaul to the sea of Africa. The misfortunes of Spain may 
be described in the language of its most eloquent histo- 
rian. . . . ' The irruption of these nations was followed 
by the most dreadful calamities ; as the Barbarians exer- 
cised their indiscriminate cruelty on the fortunes of the 
Romans and the Spaniards, and ravaged with equal fury 
the cities and the open country. The progress of famine 
reduced the miserable inhabitants to feed on the flesh of 
their fellow creatures ; and even the wild beasts, who 
multiplied without control in the desert, were exasperated 
by the taste of blood and the impatience of hunger boldly 
to attack and devour their human prey. Pestilence soon 
appeared, the inseparable companion of famine ; a large 
proportion of the people was swept away, and the groans 
of the dying excited only the envy of their surviving 
friends. At length the Barbarians, satiated with carnage 
and rapine and afflicted by the contagious evils which they 
themselves had introduced, fixed their permanent seats in 
the depopulated country. . . . The conquerors contracted 
with their new subjects some reciprocal engagements of 
protection and obedience ; the lands were again cultivated, 
and the towns and villages were again occupied by a cap- 
tive people. The greatest part of the Spaniards was even 
disposed to prefer this new condition of poverty and bar- 
barism to the severe oppressions of the Roman govern- 
ment ; yet there were many who still asserted their native 
freedom, and who refused, more especially in the moun- 
tains of Galicia, to submit to the Barbarian yoke. ' " 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 15 

These ferocious conquerors were in their turn 
subdued by the Visigoths, who, under the lead of 
their chieftain Walia, subjugated Spain, holding 
it at first as nominally subject to Eome, but in a 
short time as an independent kingdom. Their 
dominion lasted for three centuries, or until the 
Mohammedan conquest. 

The Goths gave to Spain a code of laws based 
largely upon the Theodosian code of Eome, so 
that the Eoman law became virtually that of 
Spain. The original conquerors had been Arians, 
but under King Eecared (586-589) they em- 
braced the orthodox or Catholic faith. Eecared 
has been styled " the first Catholic king of Spain." 
" All the books of the Arian theology were re- 
duced to ashes, with the building in which they 
were purposely collected." The opposition to 
the change was put down by force of arms and 
severely punished as rebellion, and the whole na- 
tion was compelled to abandon the Arian for the 
Catholic faith. In this period we thus find the 
beginning of that theological intolerance which 
has ever since been the especial characteristic of 
Spain. \ 

This intolerant spirit soon turned to the perse- 
cution of the Jews. 

"That exiled nation had founded some synagogs in 
the cities of Gaul ; but Spain, since the time of Hadrian, 



16 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

was filled with their numerous colonies. The wealth 
which they accumulated by trade and the management of 
the finances invited the pious avarice of their masters ; 
and they might be oppressed without danger, as they had 
lost the use and even the remembrance of arms. Sisebut, 
a Gothic king, who reigned in the beginning of the sev- 
enth century, proceeded at once to the last extremes of 
persecution. Ninety thousand Jews were compelled to 
receive the sacrament of baptism ; the fortunes of the ob- 
stinate infidels were confiscated ; their bodies were tor- 
tured. . . . The excessive zeal of the Catholic king was 
moderated even by the clergy of Spain. * 1 

This, it will be noted, was more than eight 
hundred years before the establishment of the 
Spanish Inquisition under Ferdinand and Isa- 
bella. But the spirit of the Inquisition was al- 
ready rife. 

In that early day, as always, the outward con- 
formity secured by persecution was attended by 
national decline and decay. By the opening of 
the eighth century the Visigoths of Spain had 
lost all resemblance to the martial hosts that had 
hewn their way from the frozen north through 
the wall of the Boman legions, occupied the fair- 
est provinces of the empire, twice sacked the 
Eternal City, and carried their conquering arms 
to the Atlantic Ocean and the Billars of Her- 
cules. 

1 Gibbon, " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, " 
vol. iii., ch. xxvii., p. 863. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 17 

The Mohammedan Arabs, or Saracens, who 
had conquered the whole northern shore of Af- 
rica, at length, in 711, with an army of 5,000 
men, crossed over to Spain, under the command 
of Tarik, whose memory is still preserved in the 
name of their landing-place, Gibraltar (Gebel al 
Tarik}, the mountain of Tarik. They were met 
by Eoderic, the king of the Goths, at the head of 
an army of nearly 100,000 men. The army of 
Tarik had been reinforced so that it numbered 
12,000. By the stream of the Guadalette, near 
Xeres, a town in the neighborhood of Cadiz, the 
armies contended for four days in sanguinary bat- 
tle. The decline of the martial prowess of the 
Visigoths is well illustrated by the description of 
the state in which their king, Eoderic, went to 
battle : 

"Alaric would have blushed at the sight of his un- 
worthy successor, sustaining on his head a diadem of 
pearls, encumbered with a flowing robe of gold and silken 
embroidery, and reclining on a litter or car of ivory drawn 
by two white mules. " 1 

Over the army thus ignobly led the stubborn 

valor of the Saracens gained a victory such as the 

Spanish troops of Cortes and Pizarro afterward 

won over the multitudinous and disorderly native 

armies of Mexico and Peru. King Eoderic, who 

fled in terror from the field, was drowned in the 

1 Gibbon, vol. v., ch. li., p. 252. 



18 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

attempt to cross a swollen stream in his precipi- 
tate flight. 

The immediate reinforcement of the victors and 
their rapid advance enabled them in a few months 
to overrun, and within four years effectually to 
subjugate, the kingdom, with the exception of the 
mountainous regions of the north. Of the con- 
duct of the conquerors, the historian already 
quoted says : 1 

"In this revolution many partial calamities were in- 
flicted by the carnal or religious passions of the enthu- 
siasts : . . . Yet if we compare the invasion of Spain by 
the Goths, or its recovery by the kings of Castile and 
Aragon, we must applaud the moderation and discipline 
of theArabian conquerors. " 

Under their rule, the Christians were protected 
in the free exercise of their own religion, agricul- 
ture flourished, and the kingdom enjoyed a high 
degree of prosperity. 

The elements of which the future Spanish na- 
tion was to be composed, or by which it was to 
be molded, were now all assembled within the 
peninsula. These elements had been drawn from 
almost all lands of the earth, and, however pure 
certain noble families may have kept their line of 
descent, it is impossible to suppose that there 
was not among the common people a large infu- 
sion of the blood of the conquerors whose suo 
1 Gibbon, vol. v., ch. li., p. 259. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 19 

cessive periods of dominion extended over cen- 
turies. To this day the characteristics of one or 
other of the conquering races may be observed in 
the differences of type and speech that distin- 
guish the people of the different provinces of 
Spain from one another, while the race and na- 
tion yet possess a substantial unity. It would be 
expected that such a mingling of races would 
produce a powerful, enterprising, and conquering 
people ; and such was the Spanish nation of the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 



II 

RISE OF THE SPANISH MONARCHY 

Withdrawal of the Visigoths to Mountain Fast- 
nesses—Mode of Life of the Wandering and 
Plundering Barons— The Character Developed— 
Conflicts of Spanish Nobles with One Another — 
Dissensions among the Saracens — Division of the 
Peninsula — Navarre— Castile — Character of John 
II. — Treacherous Arrest and Execution of Al- 
varo de Luna — Aragon— Character of John II. 
of Aragon — Treacherous Arrest of His Son, Don 
Carlos — Rescue and Death of Don Carlos — 
Blanche of Aragon Surrendered to and Poisoned by 
Her Sister— Marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella 
— The Archbishop of Toledo Forges a Papal Bull of 
Permission — Union of the Kingdoms — Disorderly- 
State of the Nation — Isabella's Circuits of Jus- 
tice — Ferdinand's Crafty and Summary Execution 
at Saragossa — Chief Events of the Reign. 

After the conquest of Spain by the Saracens, 
while many of the conquered Visigoths doubtless 
remained among their conquerors, accepting the 
favorable terms of submission, the more martial 
and resolute of the conquered people took refuge 
among the mountains of the north, where the 
rugged region was at once easily defensible by the 
inhabitants and uninviting to an enemy satiated 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY ■ 21 

with conquest. In the life of hardship to which 
they were now exposed, the martial virtues of their 
ancestors revived. Every spot of vantage was 
fortifiedo Almost every height and cliff, however 
seemingly inaccessible, was crowned with its cas- 
tle. The very name of one province, Castile, is 
derived from these fortresses ; it was the region of 
frontier castles. As the land thus held was com- 
paratively unproductive, forays upon the posses- 
sion of " the infidel" became a military necessity, 
as well as a patriotic and religious duty. These 
centuries of armed forays seem to have given 
a permanent bias to the Spanish character, and 
even to have wrought an incurable perversion 
of intellect. As during all that long period of 
life-and-death struggle against the Moslem, the 
shortest and easiest way to get whatever was 
needed in those rock-built castles was to go to 
some one who had it and take it by the sword, 
the Spaniard came to the unalterable conviction 
that the only path to wealth and prosperity is to 
find some one who possesses the wealth, and take 
it from him by force. In every conquest and 
every colony for centuries, this spirit of spoliation 
has been the dominant impulse of the Spanish 
race. They have seemed unable to conceive of 
any advantage to be gained from territorial acqui- 
sition, except the riches that could be actually 



22 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

seized and carried away by the strong hand from 
a conquered or subject race. Spain has gone into 
every land on which she has set foot, as her bar- 
ons of the olden time issued from their mountain 
fastnesses into the domains of the Saracen, to 
ravage, plunder, and despoil. 

In the same early period was developed, also, 
that policy of retreating before an invader, and 
then turning upon and attacking him as he re- 
tired, which has made Spain, as Macaulay has 
said, " the easiest of all lands to overrun, and the 
hardest to conquer." To this prolonged struggle 
against the Saracen may be traced yet another 
principle often to be seen in the dealings of Span- 
iards with their enemies, viz. : that the strongest 
fortification is a desert. When hard pressed by 
the enemy, the early Spaniards would turn their 
whole frontier into a desolation, and retire to in- 
accessible fastnesses, which no invader could live 
to reach across the waste. 

The effect of this period of struggle on the 
character and institutions of the nation is best 
given in the admirable summary of Prescott : * 

" The monarch, once master of the whole Peninsula, now 
beheld his empire contracted to a few barren, inhospitable 
rocks. The noble, instead of the broad lands and thronged 

144 History of the Peign of Ferdinand and Isabella," 
Int. vol. i., pp. xxxvi-xl. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 23 

halls of his ancestors, saw himself at best but the chief of 
some wandering horde, seeking a doubtful subsistence, 
like himself, by rapine. The peasantry, indeed, may be 
said to have gained by the exchange ; and in a situation 
in which all factitious distinctions were of less worth than 
individual prowess and efficiency, they rose in political 
consequence. . . . 

" A sensible and salutary influence, at the same time, 
was exerted on the moral energies of the nation, which had 
been corrupted in the long enjoyment of uninterrupted 
prosperity. . . . Whatever may have been the vices of 
the Spaniards, they can not have been those of effeminate 
sloth. Thus a sober, hardy, and independent race was 
gradually formed, prepared to assert their ancient inheri- 
tance, and to lay the foundations of far more liberal and 
equitable forms of governnment than were known to their 
ancestors. " 

At the same time, the fierce independence 

nourished by the necessities of their life made 

them almost incapable of united action. 

" The numerous petty states, which rose from the ruins 
of the ancient monarchy, seemed to regard each other with 
even a fiercer hatred than that with which they viewed the 
enemies of their faith ; a circumstance that more than once 
brought the nation to the verge of ruin. More Christian 
blood was wasted in these national feuds than in all their 
encounters with the infidel. The soldiers of Fernan Gon- 
zalez, a chieftain of the tenth century, complained that 
their master made them lead the life of very devils, keep- 
ing them in the harness day and night, in wars, not against 
the Saracens, but one another. " 

It is probable that in this state of things they 

were only enabled to maintain themselves and to 

advance their conquests by the similar dissen- 



24 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 



sions among their enemies. These were slowly 
but steadily advanced, till, by the middle of the 
fifteenth century, all of Spain except the single 
province of Granada, had been reconquered, 




Spain in the Xllth and Xlllth Centuries. 

Spain at this time was divided between the 
four kingdoms of Castile, Navarre, Aragon, and 
Granada. Portugal was already an independent 
kingdom on the west. 

The little kingdom of Navarre, nestled among 
the Pyrenees, long preserved its independence, 
as Switzerland has continued to do, partly by the 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 



25 



valor of its inhabitants, but still more by the 
mutual jealousies of its more powerful neighbors. 
Castile, with which Leon was now united, com- 
prising a great part of the vast central plateau of 




Spain in the XlVth and first part of the XVth Century. 

Spain, had become the chief state of the Penin- 
sula. Numerous and wealthy cities had arisen, 
and, as they were in constant danger of attack, 
they were strongly fortified, while at the same 
time their citizens were trained in arms and be- 
came a powerful soldiery, whether for the defence 
of their own privileges or of the safety of the 



26 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

kingdom. Their importance as defensive posts 
against the common enemy, joined with the mar- 
tial valor of their inhabitants, had secured them 
great privileges and a large measure of popular 
freedom. So jealous were they of their rights 
that for a long period many of the cities allowed 
no nobleman to hold real estate or to erect any 
palace or fortress within their limits. Their rep- 
resentatives were the chief power in the Cortes 
or Castilian parliament, which possessed impor- 
tant prerogatives of legislation, taxation, the con- 
clusion of treaties, and the regulation of appro- 
priations in peace and war, while their consent 
was required to give each new monarch a valid 
title to the crown. For their better protection, 
the cities had formed a confederation known as 
the Santa Hermandad, or Holy Brotherhood, 
which executed its decrees by an armed force. 

At the same time, the Castilian nobility had 
acquired vast and dangerous power. 

"The higher nobility, or ricos hombres, were exempted 
from general taxation, and the occasional attempt to in- 
fringe on this privilege in seasons of great public emer- 
gency was uniformly repelled by this jealous body. They 
could not be imprisoned for debt ; nor be subjected to tor- 
ture, so repeatedly sanctioned in other cases by the muni- 
cipal law of Castile. They had the right of deciding their 
private feuds by an appeal to arms ; a right of which they 
liberally availed themselves. They also claimed the priv- 
ilege, when aggrieved, of denaturalizing themselves, or, 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 27 

in other words, of publicly renouncing their allegiance to 
their sovereigns, and of enlisting under the banners of his 
enemy. ... In virtue of their birth they monopolized 
all the higher offices of state. . . . Finally, they entered 
into the royal or privy council, and formed a constituent 
portion of the national legislature. 

" These important prerogatives were of course favorable 
to the accumulation of great wealth. Their estates were 
scattered over every part of the kingdom, and, unlike the 
grandees of Spain at the present day, they resided on them 
in person, maintaining the state of petty sovereigns. . . . 

"These ambitious nobles did not consume their fortunes 
or their energies in a life of effeminate luxury. From 
their earliest boyhood, they were accustomed to serve in 
the ranks against the infidel, and their whole subsequent 
lives were occupied either with war, or with those martial 
exercises which reflect the image of it. " l 

Aragon had originally been a mountain prov- 
ince, not unlike Navarre, but by the acquisition 
of Catalonia and Valencia had become an impor- 
tant maritime power, including rich seaboard 
cities, and reaching out to foreign conquests, 
which had brought Sicily, Sardinia, and the Ba- 
learic Isles under the dominion of the prince of 
Aragon. 

The nobility of Aragon possessed powers much 
like those of Castile, though their smaller number 
led them more readily to combine for united ac- 
tion. The Cortes possessed greater powers than 
the corresponding assembly of Castile, and these 

^rescott, "Ferdinand and Isabella," Int., pp. lx., lxi. 



28 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

were sustained by a fierce spirit of independence 
on the part of the people, who were ever ready 
to revolt on the first attempt at royal usurpation. 
The power and prosperity of the maritime 
cities are well illustrated by the description of 
Barcelona : 

" By the thirteenth [century], Barcelona had reached a 
degree of commercial prosperity rivaling that of any of 
the Italian republics. She divided with them the lucrative 
commerce with Alexandria ; and her port, thronged with 
foreigners from every nation, became a principal emporium 
in the Mediterranean for the spices, drugs, perfumes, and 
other rich commodities of the East, whence they were dif- 
fused over the interior of Spain and the European conti- 
nent. Her consuls, and her commercial factories, were 
established in every considerable port in the Mediterra- 
nean and in the north of Europe. The natural products of 
her soil, and her various domestic fabrics, supplied her 
with abundant articles of export. Fine wool was imported 
by her in considerable quantities from England in the four- 
teenth and fifteenth centuries, and returned there manufac- 
tured into cloth; an exchange of commodities the reverse 
of that existing between the two nations at the present 
day. Barcelona claims the merit of having established 
the first bank of exchange and deposit in Europe, in 1401 ; 
it was devoted to the accommodation of foreigners as well 
as of her own citizens. . . . 

"The wealth which flowed in upon Barcelona, as the 
result of her activity and enterprise, was evinced by her 
numerous public works, her docks, arsenal, warehouses, 
exchange, hospitals, and other constructions of general 
utility. Strangers who visited Spain in the fourteenth 
and fifteenth centuries expatiate on the magnificence of this 
city, its commodious private edifices, the cleanliness of its 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 29 

streets and public squares (a virtue by no means usual in 
that day), and on the amenity of its gardens and culti- 
vated environs. " l 

These two powerful kingdoms were united by 
the marriage, on October 19, 1469, of Ferdi- 
nand of Aragon with Isabella of Castile. The 
story of the betrothal and marriage of the princely 
lovers reads lika a chapter of romance. They 
came to an inheritance full of care, trouble, and 
peril. The father of each was named John, and 
was the second of his name, the one of Aragon, 
the other of Castile. 

John II. of Castile, the father of Isabella, had 
been under the dominion of an able but cunning 
and profligate minister, till he came more fully 
under the dominion of a young and ambitious 
wife, whom he married late in life, the mother 
of Isabella. At her instance, the king arrested 
his minister, Alvaro de Luna, by violation of his 
own royal safe-conduct, and sent him to execu- 
tion. The whole reign of this monarch, though 
a brilliant epoch for Castilian literature, was a 
time of decline and invasion of popular rights, 
the representation of the cities in the Cortes being 
greatly reduced; and also a time of tumult, con- 
spiracy, and insurrection among the nobility, who 
were in ceaseless contest with the powerful favor- 

^rescott, "Ferdinand and Isabella," Int., vol. i., p. 
cxiv. 



30 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

ite. John left Jiis throne to his son by a former 
marriage, Henry* the Fourth, a weak, extravagant, 
vainglorious, and licentious prince, whose court 
has been described as "little better than a broth- 
el." It is to the everlasting honor of Isabella 
that, with such an ancestry and such kindred, her 
own life was so lofty, good, and pure. 

John II. of Aragon, the father of Ferdinand, 
was still living at the time of his son's marriage. 
He was a sturdy and valiant warrior, but of a 
disposition at once ferocious and treacherous. 
He had signalized his reign by "hunting the un- 
happy heretics of Biscay like wild beasts among 
the mountains." He is said to have been one of 
the first of European monarchs to develop and 
bring into vogue that science of dark intrigue 
and systematic falsehood which for the next three 
centuries was called diplomacy. He, too, had 
married late in life a young and ambitious Cas- 
tilian princess, through whose influence he was 
involved in contests with his eldest son, the ad- 
mired and beloved Don Carlos. After the son 
had long been virtually banished from the king- 
dom, his father decoyed him within reach of ar- 
rest, and threw him into prison, from which he 
was only released in consequence of a general re- 
bellion of the people of Aragon, and especially of 
Barcelona, who rose in arms in behalf of the 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 31 

prince. Scarcely, however, had his release been 
secured, when he passed away by a suspicious 
death. His elder sister, Blanche, who now be- 
came heir to the kingdom of Navarre, was torn 
from her home by her father, and forcibly trans- 
ported, in spite of her most piteous entreaties, 
across the border of Aragon, and delivered into 
the custody of her younger sister, Eleanora, to 
whom the king had promised the little kingdom 
on his own decease ; and by this sister, to whom 
she had been delivered by a father, the unhappy 
princess was poisoned. It was through events 
such as these that Ferdinand came to the crown. 
As the royal families of Castile and Aragon 
were related by repeated intermarriages, the two 
John II. 's being own cousins, Ferdinand and Isa- 
bella were within " the prohibited degrees," that 
is, within the limit of consanguinity to which 
marriage is prohibited by the Eoman Catholic 
Church. This difficulty could only legally be 
removed by a dispensation from the pope. But 
as the then reigning pontiff was known to be 
unfriendly, the archbishop of Toledo simply forged 
the necessary bull, at the instigation, it is said, 
of the old king, John II. of Aragon, and with the 
approval of Ferdinand, though without the privity 
of Isabella, who was greatly displeased on the 
discovery of the fraud at a later period. Then, 



32 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

however, a friendly pope was on the throne, who 
readily issued a genuine dispensation. 

When such was the character of kings and 
prelates, it is a foregone conclusion that there 
would be widespread corruption among the nobil- 
ity, the clergy, and people. The castles had be- 
come dens of robbers, and plunder and devasta- 
tion were carried not only up to, but within the 
cities themselves. In the contentions of the war- 
ring nobles, who sometimes brought thousands of 
men at once into the field, agriculture perished 
and trade became ruinously insecure. 

" On one occasion the duke of Medina Sidonia mustered 
an army of twenty thousand men against his antagonist ; 
on another, no less than fifteen hundred houses of the 
Ponce faction were burnt to the ground in Seville. Such 
were the potent engines employed by these petty sover- 
eigns in their conflicts with one another, and such the 
havoc which they brought on the fairest portion of the 
Peninsula. The husbandman, stripped of his harvest and 
driven from his fields, abandoned himself to idleness, or 
sought subsistence by plunder. A scarcity ensued in the 
years 1472 and 1473, in which the prices of the most 
necessary commodities rose to such an exorbitant height 
as to put them beyond the reach of any but the affluent. " 1 

This lawlessness Isabella suppressed by a cir- 
cuit throughout her dominions, holding courts of 
justice, at which she presided in person at least 
once a week, in each of the principal cities ; and 

^rescott, "Ferdinand and Isabella, " vol. i., ch. iv. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 33 

also by organizing the popular league of the Her- 
mandad into an armed national police under the 
direct control of the sovereign, that repressed dis- 
order with an iron hand. Ferdinand sometimes 
adopted a course at once more summary and more 
indirect. Of such proceedings, Prescott gives the 
following instance in the treatment of a powerful 
and corrupt demagog of Saragossa, named Xi- 
menes Gordo: 

"As Gordo occasionally visited the palace to pay bis 
respects to the prince, the latter affected to regard Mm with 
more than usual favor, showing him such courtesy as might 
dissipate any distrust he had conceived of him. Gordo, 
thus assured, was invited at one of those interviews to with- 
draw into a retired apartment, where the prince wished to 
confer with him on business of moment. On entering the 
chamber he was surprised by the sight of the public exe- 
cutioner, the hangman of the city, whose presence to- 
gether with that of a priest, and the apparatus of death 
with which the apartment was garnished, revealed at once 
the dreadful nature of his destiny. 

"He was then charged with the manifold crimes of 
which he had been guilty, and sentence of death was pro- 
nounced on him. In vain did he appeal to Ferdinand, 
pleading the services which he had rendered on more than 
one occasion to his father. Ferdinand assured him that 
these should be gratefully remembered in the protection of 
his children, and then, bidding him unburden his con- 
science to his confessor, consigned him to the hand of the 
executioner. His body was exposed that very day in the 
market-place of the city, to the dismay of his friends and 
adherents, most of whom paid the penalty of their crimes 
in the ordinary course of justice. " 

3 



34 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

Above all the high personal qualities of Isa- 
bella, her genius of administration, and her cease- 
less endeavors availed to reconcile the warring 
nobles to one another, as well as to win the 
regard and loyalty of all classes of her people. 
The long War of the Succession against Portugal 
brought misfortune and desolation in its train, 
reducing the entire Portuguese frontier to a deso- 
lation ; yet at its close the general welfare of the 
kingdom of Castile was on the whole advanced. 
When, in 1479, the old king of Aragon died, 
leaving his crown to his son, Castile and Aragon 
were effectually united in the one kingdom of 
Spain. 

Four great events signalized the united reign of 
Ferdinand and Isabella, viz. : the establishment 
of the Inquisition, the conquest of Granada, the 
discovery of America, and the expulsion of the 
Jews from Spain. The first of these events oc- 
curred in 1481, the other three in the historic 
year 1492. 



in 



THE INQUISITION 

Special Ferocity of the Spanish Tribunal— Early In- 
tolerance of the Spaniards— Effect of the Centu- 
ries of War against Mohammedan Invaders — The 
Tribunal Instituted at Castile — Torquemada 
made Inquisitor-General— Flight and Recapture 
of the " New Christians " — Number of Victims in 
One Year— The Tribunal Resisted in Aragon— 
The Chief Inquisitor Assassinated and Terribly 
Avenged — Description of the Inquisition — Arrests 
— Evidence — Prisons — Torture— The Auto da Fe— 
Results of the Inquisition in Spain. 

The tribunal of the Inquisition has existed in 
many Eoman Catholic countries, but in Spain it 
exhibited a peculiar mercilessness, and even fero- 
city, which have caused the modern tribunal to 
be popularly known everywhere as " The Spanish 
Inquisition." For this sad preeminence of Spain, 
there were many reasons. 

There seems to have been a strong tendency to 
intolerance among the Spanish people, even as far 
back as the time of the Eoman dominion. Of 

35 



36 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

this, the historian Gibbon gives the following 
striking instance : 1 

" The councils of Ancyra and Illiberis were held about 
the same time [about the middle of the fourth century] , 
the one in Galatea, the other in Spain ; but their respec- 
tive canons, which are still extant, seem to breathe a very 
different spirit. The Galatian, who after his baptism had 
repeatedly sacrificed to idols, might obtain his pardon by 
a penance of seven years ; and if he had seduced others to 
imitate his example, only three years more were added to 
the term of his exile. But the unhappy Spaniard who had 
committed the same offense was deprived of the hope of recon- 
ciliation even in the article of death; and his idolatry was 
placed at the head of a list of seventeen other crimes, 
against which a sentence no less terrible was pronounced. " 

After the conquest of Spain by the Arabs, it 
could not but be that nearly eight centuries of 
unremitting warfare against an enemy alien in 
religion as in race should, in spite of all military 
and knightly courtesy between the warring na- 
tions, give a darker tinge to religious animosity. 2 
Christian against infidel was native against 
foreigner, European against Asiatic, inhabitants 

1 " Decline and Fall of the Eoman Empire, " vol. iii. , ch. 
xv., p. 569. 

2 See Prescott, " Ferdinand and Isabella, " vol. i. , ch. 
vii., p. 235 sq., for account of Jews; and ch. viii. for 
Spanish Arabs or Moors; also, "Philip II., "vol. i., p. 
447, etc. ; and "Conquest of Mexico, " vol. i., p. 269, etc. 
See also " History of the Inquisition, " by William Harris 
Rule, D.D., chs. viii.-xv. ; " A History of the Inquisition 
of the Middle Ages, " by Henry Charles Lea. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 37 

against invaders. Catholic and Christian came to 
mean countryman and patriot. The hostility felt 
toward Moor and Jew was soon extended to the 
Spaniard who severed from the national faith. 
He was looked upon as a traitor; and all the 
odious force of that word entered into the terms 
"renegade/' "apostate," and "heretic." All these 
tendencies the Inquisition adopted 1 in the name 
of that religion where " there is neither Jew nor 
Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond, nor free." It 
spent its first fury upon those of Moorish or 
Jewish extraction, whom the Spaniard could see 
burned with great complacency. 

As a political institution, the Inquisition poured 
confiscated wealth into the monarch's treasury 
in partial compensation for the aid of " the secu- 
lar arm"; and by crushing all ranks of men 
under the ecclesiastical, it made them more 
readily submit to the royal despotism. While 
Isabella struggled long against giving place to 
the terrible tribunal, and only at last yielded 
reluctantly to the authority of her revered spir- 
itual advisers, Ferdinand seems from the very 
beginning to have hailed with delight the nros- 
pect of ample confiscations which it opened be- 
fore him. 

1 " Life of Cardinal Ximenes, " by Rev. Dr. von Hefele, 
pp. 314, 315. 



38 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

The Spanish Inquisition, formally constituted 
by papal bull, published its first mandate at 
Seville, January 2d, 1481. Friar Thomas de Tor- 
quemada was made the first Inquisitor-General of 
Spain. He was a man alert, industrious, resolute, 
and pitiless — the ideal inquisitor. It has been 
said of him by one of the calmest and most im- 
partial of judges, that "this man's zeal was of 
such an extravagant character that it may almost 
shelter itself under the name of insanity/' ] 

The first victims of the new tribunal were the 
New Christians, as those Jews were called who 
who had been compulsorily " converted" at vari- 
ous times, together with their descendants. As 
the genuineness of such conversions was naturally 
suspected, the Inquisition set itself to hunt for 
evidences of apostasy. 

The accusations soon became so numerous that 
the New Christians fled in terror from the city. 
Then the nobility of the surrounding region were 
called upon, under the penalty of becoming them- 
selves the victims of the Inquisition, to arrest 
and return the fugitives. Soon-, from every side, 
miserable processions of those who had but lately 
been peaceful and prosperous citizens, men and 
women, young and old, manacled and guarded by 

1 Prescott, "Ferdinand and Isabella," vol. i., ch, vii., 
p. 260. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 39 

armed men, wended their way back to Seville. 1 
The inquisitors proceeded with a dispatch worthy 
of a better cause. 

" On the sixth day of January, six convicts suffered at 
the stake. Seventeen more were executed in March, and a 
still greater number in the month following ; and by the 
4th of November in the same year no less than two hun- 
dred and ninety-eight individuals had been sacrificed in 
the autos dafe of Seville. Besides these, the mouldering 
remains of many, who had been tried and convicted after 
their death, were torn up from their graves, with a hyena- 
like ferocity, which has disgraced no other court, Chris- 
tian or Pagan, and condemned to the common funeral pile. 
This was prepared on a spacious stone scaffold, erected in 
the suburbs of the city, with the statues of four prophets 
attached to the corners, to which the unhappy sufferers 
were bound for the sacrifice, and which the worthy curate 
of Los Palacios celebrates with much complacency as the 
spot ' where heretics were burnt, and ought to burn as long 
as any can be found. ' " 

In Aragon, the liberty-loving inhabitants re- 
sisted the Inquisition with their customary readi- 
ness for rebellion. After vain protests to the 
crown against the new tribunal, the chief inquisi- 
tor, Arbues, was assassinated as he knelt before the 
great altar in the cathedral of Saragossa, Septem- 
ber 14, 1485. The result, as usual in such cases, 
was only to rivet the oppression more firmly, and 
make its severities more sweeping and terrible. 

^ule, "History of the Inquisition, " vol. i., ch. viii., 
p. 131. 



40 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

"In the course of this persecution, two hundred indi- 
viduals perished at the stake, and a still greater number in 
the dungeons of the Inquisition ; and there was scarcely a 
noble family in Aragon but witnessed one or more of its 
members condemned to humiliating penance in the autos 
dafe. The immediate perpetrators of the murder were all 
hanged, after suffering the amputation of their right 
hands. One, who had appeared as evidence against the 
rest, under assurance of pardon, had his sentence so far 
commuted, that his hand was not cut off till after he had 
been hanged. It was thus that the Holy Office interpreted 
its promises of grace. " 1 

Attempts at resistance in other provinces of 
Aragon were put down by Ferdinand with the 
iron hand of military power. 

What, then, was that Inquisition, which a 
whole kingdom thus feared and resisted? 

In the days of its glory, a familiar, or special 
officer, of the same rank with the accused, would 
appear suddenly before him, perhaps just as he 
was on the point of entering his own door, and, 
with mute gesture or brief phrase, make known 
to him that he was summoned by the Holy Office, 
then turn and walk away, and the person sum- 
moned, as if under an enchanter's spell, followed 
close in his steps, without reply or question, with- 
out so much delay as would admit of change of 
raiment or farewell word, and vanished from the 
world of the living, as if the earth had swallowed 
him up. 

1 Prescott, "Ferdinand and Isabella, " vol.i., ch. xiii. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 41 

The name and testimony of every witness were 
kept secret from every other witness and from 
the accused. The charge on which he was ar- 
raigned was kept secret from the accused. The 
trial was conducted in absolute secrecy, none 
being present except the inquisitor or inquisitors, 
the person on trial, and the notary who wrote 
down every word. The prisons were secret pris- 
ons in the strictest sense. No friend, however 
near, husband, wife, parent, child might see the 
prisoner for one single instant. The arrange- 
ments were such that no one could obtain the least 
glimpse outside his cell to know whose garments 
brushed against the door. Should a word be 
spoken audible without, the speaker was liable 
to be beaten like a dog by the staff of the ward- 
ers, who patrolled the corridors day and night; 
so that, ordinarily, a silence like that of the grave 
reigned throughout the place. No book, pen, nor 
anything that could possibly be used as writing- 
material, was allowed in any cell. Thus, when 
whole families were at once incarcerated, the 
place and fate of each was hidden from all the 
rest, unless possibly several met on the day of 
final sentence. The whole process of the trial, 
involving life, and much that is dearer than life, 
was kept secret from the prisoner himself. He 
knew not what opinion had been passed on his 



42 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

previous confessions or denials. Sometimes he 
was told he "had not confessed all," and sent 
back, perhaps to remember, perhaps to invent 
something for a fresh audience, to come he knew 
not when. Sometimes a list was read to him of 
things considered "proved," which he must con- 
fess or be put to "the question by torment." 
After such monition, and after the "torment," 
if it came, he was remanded to solitude and si- 
lence again. If at last released, he was bound by 
most solemn oath never to reveal any thing he 
had heard or seen during his imprisonment — an 
oath few would dare to break who had experi- 
enced such captivity, and knew how much more 
it was possible to suffer. If condemned, the sen- 
tence was kept secret from the victim, till the 
evening before he was to die ; and when brought 
out in the awful procession, if he showed any 
disposition to speak, the gag closed his lips till 
they were more securely sealed in death. Thus 
inviolate was kept the secret of the Inquisition. 

The effect of this, it at once appears, was to 
render the judges practically irresponsible. They 
might arrest whom they pleased, and all they 
arrested were absolutely at their mercy. We 
read of the right of appeal to Eome, but from 
those secret prisons no appeal was possible, unless 
accepted and forwarded by the inquisitor himself. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 43 

If, indeed, there were friends without, brave 
enough and powerful enough, they might make 
themselves heard in that far-off court; but it 
must be without knowledge of accusation or evi- 
dence, a mere personal plea for mercy. 

The method by which the Inquisition obtained 
its evidence is the most marvelous and complete 
ever devised by man. In the first place, every 
Eoman Catholic was under obligation to report 
instantly to the authorities whatever came to his 
knowledge, that " seemed contrary to the faith." 
In public and in private was continually urged 
the duty of servant and master, brother and sis- 
ter, parent and child, husband and wife, to give 
information each against the other. Every one 
must visit the confessional at least three times a 
year, or be liable to arrest on suspicion of heresy. 
In that place, so solemn to every devout believer, 
he would be so narrowly questioned that he could 
not withhold information except by a lie, as it 
were, in the very presence of God. Not only the 
strain of conscience, but the personal risk would 
be very great; for the one implicated might in- 
form against himself, and, by the strange meta- 
morphosis of inquisitorial trials, be made a wit- 
ness against his silent friend. 1 Thus the last 

1 " Critical History of the Inquisition, " by Juan Antonio 
Llorente, ch. xi., p. 106. [Llorente was secretary of the 



44 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

bond of honor was snapped. Every one had need 
to beware of the stranger who walked or rode be- 
side him, of the workmen in his shop, the ser- 
vants in his house, of his nearest and dearest, 
who sat at his table or shared his rest. 

It need only be added that against a heretic 
the evidence of any and all persons was valid, 
though they were excommunicated by the Church 
or convicted of the blackest crimes known to civil 
law. 

The penalties of the Inquisition were confisca- 
tion, penance, imprisonment, infamy, and death. 
From the moment of arrest all the property of the 
accused was attached in the name of the Inquisi- 
tion. There seems reason to believe that it was 
rarely restored. Few came forth without so 
much stigma of heresy as would justify, accord- 
ing to the inquisitorial law, the final confiscation 
of their goods. The released were not apt to 
enter into a quarrel for property with that power 
from whose grasp they were, and would still be, 
glad to escape with life. 

Torture, of which so much has been written, 
was not inflicted as a penalty, but simply as a 
means of obtaining evidence. The whole process 
was often called simply "the question." Intoler- 

tribunal of Madrid, from 1790 to 1792, and had access to 
the official records. ] 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 45 

able agony, under which one might happen to 
die, was but a casual incident of inquisitorial 
trials. It is said to have been in use at the 
same time in the civil courts throughout Europe, 
but that is surely no defense of the Inquisition. 
That tribunal was expressly constituted for affairs 
of religion. We should have expected such an 
institution to go out into the civil courts and 
stay the horrors enacted there ; 1 but, instead, it 
carried them within its own stately halls, and 
made them there more systematic and terrible. 

Of imprisonment there were various gradations. 
At one extreme was the indulgence sometimes 
shown perpetual prisoners, of confinement in con- 
vents, or in comfortable cells, where they might 
work at some calling, and see friends under cer- 
tain restrictions. At the other extreme was the 
dungeon, where to exist was but to prolong and 
multiply the death agony. There was the service 
of the galleys, where men of wealth, learning, and 
honor, mingled with the lowest criminals, were 
chained to the oar, and toiled under the lash, 
or labored, half -fettered, in the docks and ship- 
yards. 

" Every man, of whatever estate, loses all office, 

1 The church had actually made such protests, as early 
as the twelfth century ; see Lea, " History of the In- 
quisition, " vol. i., ch. viii., pp. 391-393. 



46 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

benefice, right, and dignity as soon as he incurs 
inquisitorial punishment" — so read the law. 1 
Nor, if his sentence was one that he could sur- 
vive, could he afterward receive any such office, 
except by special dispensation of the pope. It 
was further provided that the children and chil- 
dren's children of a condemned heretic could hold 
no office of honor or profit, nor wear silk, fine 
wool, gold, or other costly adornments 2 — so sub- 
stantial was the significance of the word "in- 
famy," besides the deep public abhorrence that 
visited the sufferer and his kindred, and was 
carefully fostered as a most important means of 
punishment. Few are the souls mighty enough 
to rise without the sense of shame above inflic- 
tions which are generally viewed as shameful; 
and around its every punishment the Inquisition 
was careful to array humiliating circumstances. 

Cases were not disposed of singly as they arose, 
but many reserved for one great day, a Sabbath, 
or a Church festival. At some central point, a 
spacious wooden amphitheater was built, in whose 
high galleries was room for all, with special ac- 
commodations for the dignitaries of church and 
state ; while in the center — as of old the gladia- 

1 Eymeric, " Directory of Inquisitors, " quoted by Rule, 
i., 99 sq. 
2 Llorente, p. 49. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 47 

tors in the arena — the victims were exposed to 
the gaze of all. Notice previously given in all 
the churches of the province would bring together 
a vast throng of spectators from far and near. 

At early dawn the great bell of the cathedral 
begins to toll, and soon the whole city is astir. 
Ere the morning is far advanced, the gates of the 
inquisitorial palace are thrown open, and a showy 
procession issues forth. Lancers clear the way 
before a splendid cavalcade, where ride the chiefs 
of the Inquisition, attended by armed familiars, 
in whose ranks are some of the highest nobles of 
the land, overshadowed by the banners of the 
pope and of the king. Then, after an interval, 
come the Dominican friars, a dense mass of black- 
robed men. Sweet, sad strains of music float out 
upon the air, and in the steps of the friars follow 
singing boys, chanting a litany — white-robed 
youth, beauty, and innocence, a fringe of light 
on the thunder- cloud. Above them waves the 
great standard of the Inquisition, whose emblems 
are a green cross on a black ground, with an olive- 
branch on one side and a sword on the other; 
and the motto, Exurge, Domine, et Judica Causam 
Tuam — "Arise, Lord, and Judge Thy Cause !" 
After the banner walk the penitents ; those guilty 
of lighter offenses clad in a coarse, scanty suit of 
black, heads and beards close shaven and feet 



48 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

bare; those who have much forgiven as the In- 
quisition forgives, with their heads thrust through 
the opening of a coarse yellow sack, which falls 
down over the shoulders and arms, and displays 
on the front a red St. Andrew's cross. This robe 
bears the name of San Benito, and once to wear 
it is degradation without remedy. On every face 
are the pallor of long imprisonment, and the 
marks of anguish of body and mind, or the deep 
apathy of broken spirit and enfeebled intellect. 
Eaised aloft and leaning toward them, in sign of 
pity,, a crucifix is borne, and following that sym- 
bol the condemned advance. To them is present- 
ed only an averted crucifix, because they may no 
longer hope for pardon. The penitents are se- 
curely guarded, but each of the condemned is at- 
tended by two armed familiars and two monks. 
These, all through the night, have been urging 
the doomed one to repent, and be reconciled to 
the Church that slays him, and still they wait 
upon his every step. Each of the unfortunates is 
covered with the San Benito, greatly changed, 
however, from that the penitents wear. It is 
now called zamarra, and painted over with flames 
and devils, and a rude portrait of the wearer, a 
head laid upon burning brands. Each wears, 
too, a conical paper cap called coroza (the mock- 
ery of a crown), also figured over with devils and 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 49 

flames. The aspect of humanity almost obliter- 
ated, there is less fear that a throb of pity will 
waken in any heart. The coarse mob see only 
objects of derision. The noble, the valiant, the 
eloquent, the devout, the beautiful, the idols of 
happy homes, have come now to this ! Their 
number at any one time may seem small — four- 
teen, sixteen, twenty-one — not many among all 
these thousands ; but over that little band how 
many hearts are aching. But no boisterous grief 
of friends mars the pomp of slaughter. That 
would be but to die without saving the one la- 
mented. Nor do any attempt to break those 
ranks of armed men, and rescue those they guard, 
for the whole population is disarmed, no one of 
any rank, not in the service of the Inquisition, 
being permitted to bear any weapon till this day 
is done. In solemn silence, or amid rude ap- 
plause and mirth, the procession moves on. Close 
behind the condemned, borne on the shoulders of 
strong men, appear the effigies, wooden figures 
representing heretics who have died or fled, each 
effigy wearing the zamarra and coroza. Then 
porters come toiling on, carrying boxes in which 
are the mortal remains of those who have been 
dead for months or years. They died, perhaps, 
in the sacraments and with the blessing of the 
Church ; but now it is discovered that they were 
4 



50 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

secretly heretics. Like a thunderbolt the sen- 
tence has fallen upon prosperous families, de- 
spoiling them of their ancestral estates, and of 
all office and honor, and sending them out beg- 
gars into the world, to be themselves evermore 
objects of especial suspicion to the Holy Office. 
Next the civic authorities of every rank lend 
their presence and sanction, while the clergy not 
elsewhere assigned, priests and monks in long 
array, close the procession. 

When all are gathered in order within the am- 
phitheater, the chief inquisitor administers to the 
magistrates, then to the people, the oath to obey 
and support the Inquisition. A sermon in de- 
fense of the tribunal follows, then the reading of 
the sentences. Each prisoner, wearing the shame- 
ful livery already described, is led to a prominent 
station, and there, in view of the assembled thou- 
sands, hears his misdeeds recited with pompous 
roll of words, ending in fearfully precise denun- 
ciation of penalty; this, hour after hour, the 
process being lengthened out by many ceremonies. 
But to those who walked bahind the averted cru- 
cifix, and who have abandoned all hope of mercy, 
the words which follow the story of their offenses 
are of almost parental tenderness : " We leave you 
to the secular judges, whom we efficaciously be- 
seech so to moderate their sentence that no shed- 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 51 

ding of blood or peril of death may follow" ; or, 
" Thou art to be given over to the secular court 
and judgment; and we hereby leave thee to that 
court, affectionately praying the same, as the 
canonical sanctions advise, to preserve thy life 
and limb unhurt." 

How gentle now the terrible tribunal ! Surely 
such requests must be obeyed, for what magis- 
trate will dare do otherwise? What, then, mean 
those strangely emblazoned garments which were 
put on in the house of the Inquisition, the double 
guards, and the beseeching monks? The next 
act in the drama will tell. As the multitude 
pours out of the theater, in the lengthening shad- 
ows of evening, still another procession forms. 
No splendor nor dignity now ! Civil officers drag 
off these unfortunates thus tenderly committed 
to their charge. Behind them follows a mingled 
crowd — priest and monk and magistrate and 
noble with solemn mien, and the lowest of the 
people with gibes and brutal yells. Soon they 
reach a singular structure. It is a platform of 
masonry sixty feet square and seven feet high, 1 
with a flight of steps seven feet wide. Such a 
structure stands at each inquisitorial center, and 
bears the name of Quemadero. There is set a 
stake for each prisoner by actual count. There 

1 As at Festive Autoat Madrid in 1680. Rule, i., 296. 



52 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

are piled fagots for the work of death. But what 
are those monks who still cling to the unfortu- 
nates, so eagerly promising now? If they now 
confess and accept "the Catholic faith" — they 
shall live ! By no means ! They shall be stran- 
gled! 

This is mercy to the body, which it saves from 
the lingering torment of the flames ; to the soul, 
which, by passing away "in the Catholic faith," 
escapes everlasting perdition. We are amazed at 
the mastery attained by the Inquisition over the 
human mind. It has stripped its victims of for- 
tune, office, and honor; it has imprisoned and 
tortured them; it has loaded their names with 
obloquy, which shall be an inheritance to their 
children's children, and now it has given them 
over to certain death ; yet still its tender mercy 
waits, with torch in one hand and cord in the 
other beside the stake, imploring to be allowed 
to kill summarily those whom it will else be 
compelled still further to torment. 

We are told that most accepted the offer, and 
that the "obstinate and impenitent heretics" ac- 
tually burnt alive were comparatively few. 1 This 
seems very probable. Cowed by long imprison- 
ment, with accumulated humiliations and mis- 

1 Lea, "History of the Inquisition," vol. i., ch. xiv., 
p. 550. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 5S 

eries, suddenly confronted with the sentence of 
death, and from that time beset with this one 
entreaty — allowed not one moment for calm 
thought or uninterrupted prayer, brought face to 
face with that from which the flesh shrank with 
an awful dread, worn with the strain of woful 
night and dreary day, surrounded by pitiless offi- 
cers and a jeering mob, seemingly forsaken of 
God and man, it would be a strong mind as well 
as a true heart that would not sink into a leth- 
argy of despair, and accept even such poor allevi- 
ation of inevitable doom. Yet there were those 
who could triumph over all; and some of the 
noblest examples of martyrdom, sturdy manli- 
ness and womanly fortitude, made by heavenly 
faith at once gentle and sublime, light up these 
gloomy annals. 

When, at length, all the work of death was 
done, men employed for the purpose kept up the 
fire through the night, and, by morning, only an 
even surface of blackened ashes appealed to 
heaven. But the Inquisition was not yet con- 
tent. The frightful zdmarras were saved from 
the funeral pyre, and, each labeled with the 
name, date, and offense of the condemned hung 
up as illustrious trophies in the churches of the 
Dominicans. So ended the Auto da Fe, the 
great, triumphal pageant of the Inquisition. 



54 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

Llorente states the number of victims during 
the eighteen years of Torquemada's rule as 10,- 
220 burnt, 6,860 condemned and burnt in effigy 
as absent or dead, and 97,321 " reconciled, " that 
is, subjected to penalties less than that of death. 
"In this enormous sum of human misery," says 
Prescott, "is not included the multitude of or- 
phans, who, from the confiscation of their pater- 
nal inheritance, were turned over to indigence 
and vice." While the accuracy of Llorente has 
been fiercely challenged, yet after all possible de- 
ductions, it remains certain that an appalling ag- 
gregate of suffering and oppression was inflicted 
by the Inquisition upon unhappy Spain. But 
even more serious than the immediate wo and 
horror were the permanent results. 

The tendency to intolerance, which time might 
have softened, was crystallized by the Inquisition, 
and deeply ingrained into the Spanish character. 
The chivalrous consideration for the Moslem ene- 
mies, of which so many examples were seen at 
and before the conquest of Granada, utterly disap- 
peared within half a century. 

By making terrible suffering an enjoyable spec- 
tacle, which no one must fail to attend, and at 
which no one, on peril of his life, must manifest 
a thrill of pity, the Inquisition trained a nation 
to delight in cruelty for its own sake, and did 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 55 

much to perpetuate that ferocious spirit that 
makes Spanish women of to-day crowd in among 
shouting and delighted thousands to watch the 
bloody butchery of the bull-fight. Coming, as it 
did, just before the discovery of America, this 
training of the Inquisition aggravated that ten- 
dency to inhumanity which so commonly charac- 
terizes civilized men in their dealings with sav- 
ages. Unpardonable cruelties have been thus 
inflicted by many nations. English and Ameri- 
cans have made a record to sadden the heart of 
humanity in their dealings with the Indians of 
the East and of the West. But no nation has a 
story of such desolating, pitiless, exterminating 
barbarity as that of the Spanish conquests in 
America. 1 The Spaniard who had seen the 
noble, cultured, and revered of his own land, 
honored men and delicate women, the youthful 
and the aged, led out in shameful garb to be 
burnt to death in the face of day, and all under 
the awful sanctions of religion, and in the august 
presence of monarchs and princes — that man 
could not feel much compassion for the agonies 
of poor, ignorant, heathen savages, every one of 
whom he was taught to believe richly merited 
the terrors of the auto da fe. Hence the change 
that came over the Spanish troops of the sixteenth 
1 See ch. viii. 



56 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

century. They were no longer the chivalrous 
knights who had achieved the conquest of Gra- 
nada or followed the banner of the Great Cap- 
tain, Gonsalvo de Cordova, on the fields of Italy. 
They kept incomparable valor and prowess, but 
they joined with it a frantic ferocity against the 
unarmed and unresisting, such as has never been 
paralleled by any other race of civilized men. 

Intellectually and morally, the Inquisition 
stopped Spain in the Middle Ages. The only 
safe opinion was an opinion which had proved 
its orthodoxy by the fact that no one had ever been 
burnt for it. Thus the march of modern thought 
went by, and left Spain, as she stands to-day, a 
hopelessly mediaeval power amid the advance of 
modern civilization. 

The Inquisition cost Spain the Netherlands; 
those provinces had born the grinding tyranny 
of Charles V. ; but the one thing to which they 
would not submit was the Inquisition. That 
was so bad, that nothing could be worse. The 
starving soldier could see the wan face of his 
wife, and hear the cry of his little ones for 
bread, and stand like a man of iron on the ram- 
part, saying, "The Inquisition is worse than this." 
The inhabitants could break down their dikes 
and welcome the ocean back to his old domain ; 
they could raise a new army when scarce a man 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 57 

lived to tell of the slaughter of the last, rather 
than submit to the secret dungeon, the rack, and 
the fire for conscience' sake. Beside the banner 
of Spain, they saw always advancing the shadowy 
standard of the Inquisition ; and, rather than that 
tribunal should be set up in their land, they would 
leave it no house to meet in, no land to build 
upon, and no inhabitants to persecute. 1 Those 
whom oppression, or the fear of it, has made so 
utterly desperate may be destroyed, but not sub- 
dued. On the blood-soaked soil of little Hol- 
land, the once invincible Spanish legions were 
wearied out, and at last broken in battle by a 
people who knew how to die. When, at length, 
the flag of England waved unassailable on the 
height of Gibraltar, and English colonies beyond 
the sea were springing into a nation where the 
Inquisition had never set foot, the most bigoted 
persecutor recognized the necessity of that toler- 
ation which had become an accomplished fact. 

1 Witness the defense of Ostend ; Motley, "United Neth- 
erlands," vol. iv., eh. xliii., page 213 sq. : "A council of 
all officers decided that Ostend must be abandoned, now 
that Ostend had ceased to exist ... It was all loathsome, 
hideous rubbish. There were no human habitations, no 
hovels, no casemates. ... In every direction the dikes 
had burst, and the sullen wash of the liberated waves . . . 
sounded far and wide over what should have been dry 
land." Only two disreputable camp-followers awaited 
the coming of the Spaniards. 



58 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

The year of the surrender of Cornwallis at York- 
town witnessed the offering of the last human 
sacrifice to the insatiable Moloch of the Inquisi- 
tion in Spain. It was the year 1781 — just three 
hundred years from the publication of its first 
mandate at Seville. 

The great experiment of compulsion in religion 
has been tried on the grandest scale, and tried in 
vain. The world has swept by the Inquisition 
and left it a wreck on the receding shore, stretch- 
ing out its spectral arms in everlasting warning. 
Spain, however, has never recovered from the 
far-reaching and wasting effects of the system 
fastened upon her by her own monarchs in the 
early days so full of glory and of a promise never 
to be fulfilled. 



IV 



THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA 

Character and Achievements of the Spanish Arabs 
— Their Architecture, Agriculture, Manufactures, 
and Commerce — Their Scholarly Attainments 
and Renowned Universities— Freedom and Edu- 
cation of Women— Knightly Courtesy— Spanish 
Valor and Prowess— Unification of the Nation 
as the Result of the War of Granada — Des- 
cription of Granada and the Vega — Merciless 
Ravages of the Spaniards — Cruelties to the 
Conquered — The Whole Population of Malaga 
Consigned to Slavery — The Spanish System of 
Armed Occupation. 

The Spanish Arabs, known also as Saracens 
and Moors, bore little resemblance to the Turks, 
from whom our ideas of Mohammedan nations 
are chiefly derived. 

Their story reads like a dream. Crossing from 
Africa, conquering the great and rich Peninsula 
with unexpected ease and suddenness, debarred 
from farther progress in western Europe by the 
memorable defeat at Tours, and driven back upon 
their original conquest, they set themselves to 
make the Iberian Peninsula a new Orient, at once 

59 



60 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

a home and a treasure-house. Palatial cities rose 
under their hand. Aqueducts, rivaling those of 
the Eoman Campagna, brought the streams from 
the mountains to city and field. Great districts, 
naturally sunburnt and barren, were made by skil- 
ful irrigation to blossom into wonderful fertility. 
The Arabs loved to surround their houses with 
trees and gardens, and at once to beautify them 
and to cool them in summer heats by the plash 
and spray of fountains. 

As agriculturists, they won deserved renown. 
They introduced the cultivation of sugar, and 
prosecuted it so successfully as not only to sup- 
ply their own wants, but to make it a chief article 
of export. They produced and manufactured silk 
in great quantities, and also fine fabrics of cotton 
and wool, in all of which they carried on a profit- 
able commerce. They forced the mines of Spain 
to yield them their wealth of precious and baser 
metals, as the Eomans in earlier days had done. 
Under their rule, Spain was a rich, a prosperous, 
and, to a great degree, a happy land. The ample 
revenue of their monarchs enabled them to under- 
take and complete works of regal splendor, of 
which the admired Alhambra and the mosque — 
now the cathedral — of Cordova, with its thousand 
pillars of variegated marble yet remaining after 
the desolations of centuries, are striking examples. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 61 

Nor was their success only in the line of ma- 
terial comfort and splendor. At the time when 
the rest of Europe was sunk in the intellectual 
night of the Dark Ages, Arabian scholars were 
reading and annotating Aristotle. In mathe- 
matics, astronomy, chemistry, and medical sci- 
ence they had made great advances. Though 
their astronomy was vitiated with astrology, and 
their chemistry with alchemy, and their medical 
science was empirical, they were far in advance 
of most of the nations of their day, and intro- 
duced into Europe many valuable remedies before 
unknown. Their universities were of such celeb- 
rity that students from all Christian lands eagerly 
repaired to them. In poetry and elegant litera- 
ture, they attained no inconsiderable success. 

Evidence of a high degree of civilization is 
afforded by the fact that their women were not 
condemned to Oriental seclusion, bat, as shown 
by the evidence of ballad, legend, and painting, 
mingled freely in the pursuits of life, as in Chris- 
tian lands. Women of the highest rank devoted 
themselves to letters and "contended, publicly, 
for the prizes, not merely in eloquence and poetry, 
but in those recondite studies which have gener- 
ally been reserved for the other sex." ' 

! Prescott, "Ferdinand and Isabella, " vol. i., ch. viii., 
p. 215. 



62 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

Another proof of advanced civilization is found 
in the martial courtesies freely interchanged be- 
tween the Saracens and their Christian opponents. 
Even in warfare, there were many gallant deeds 
of mutual knightly consideration, and in the 
intervals of peace Christian and Mohammedan 
knights met as equals in the tournament, observ- 
ing toward each other all chivalrous consideration, 
faith, and honor. 

They had shown a spirit of religious toleration 
remarkable for any people in that age. At their 
original conquest of Spain, they allowed all the 
conquered people who chose to do so to continue 
to reside in their own cities or provinces. While 
some Christian churches were converted into 
mosques, a considerable number were left to the 
Christian congregations, which were everywhere 
allowed the undisturbed practice of their own 
religion. Though the rule of the conquerors be- 
came more severe as their conquests became more 
assured, yet even the Spanish chroniclers of the 
time of Ferdinand and Isabella do not allege 
against the Saracens bigotry and persecution. 

From a military point of view, the results of 
the war of Granada were glorious. It united the 
mutually jealous and hostile nobles, and fused 
into one the people of the once disintegrated prov- 
inces. The Spaniards went into the war an ill- 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 63 

restrained mob of contending nobles and factious 
retainers, and came out a nation, with a united 
and disciplined army destined to be the mightiest 
military force of Europe for nearly a hundred 
years. Deeds of valor were done both by Span- 
iard and Saracen, that stir the heart like the 
deeds of Greeks and Trojans in Homer's epic. 
In personal intrepidity, indeed, the Spaniards 
have perhaps never been surpassed, uniting as 
they did in their best days the fiery valor of the 
Trench with the stubborn sturdiness of the Saxon. 
The Spaniard of to-day can not fail in soldierly 
courage, unless he shall be found to have degen- 
erated from a brave and valiant ancestry, which 
lacked only the touch of a true humanity to be 
heroic. 

But the world is coming to see that mere mar- 
tial prowess is the least part of the glory of na- 
tions. The question now is, not how did men 
fight, but what did they fight for, and what re- 
sults did they wring from the desolation and wo 
of war? 

That the Spanish sovereigns should have de- 
sired to bring the whole Peninsula under their 
dominion, and to free it from the domination of 
an alien race and a hostile religion, is not sur- 
prising. Undoubtedly the Arabs had consider- 
ably declined from the high attainments of earlier 



64 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

days. Still, it is matter of unceasing wonder 
that the Spaniards should have seen nothing bet- 
ter to do with all the achievements of such a race 
as they encountered than to batter down, plunder, 
and despoil — nothing better to do with such a 
people than to turn them into homeless, wan- 
dering, and cowering dependents and vassals, 
unable to maintain their ancient industry and 
prosperity, which their ruthless conquerors were 
themselves impotent to reproduce. The Span- 
iards treated Spain itself as a conquered and hos- 
tile realm, in which they were only to maintain 
an armed encampment, with no thought of those 
enduring sources of prosperity and power for 
which each nation must depend upon a wise de- 
velopment of the resources of that home-land 
which is its own inheritance, and the neglect of 
which is the sure path to decay and extinction. 

In the fascinating pages of Irving 1 we find 
the following description of Granada : 

" This renowned kingdom, situated in the southern part 
of Spain, and washed on one side by the Mediterranean 
Sea, was traversed in every direction by sierras, or chains 
of lofty and rugged mountains, naked, rocky, and pre- 
cipitous, rendering it almost impregnable, but locking up 
within their sterile embraces deep, rich, and verdant 
valleys of prodigal fertility. 

" In the center of the kingdom lay its capital, the beau- 

1 " Chronicles of the Conquest of Granada, " ch. i., pp. 3-5. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 65 

tiful city of Granada, sheltered, as it were, in the lap of 
the Sierra Nevada, or Snowy Mountains. Its houses, 
seventy thousand in number, covered two lofty hills with 
their declivities, and a deep valley between them, through 
which flowed the Darro. The streets were narrow, as is 
usual in Moorish and Arab cities, but there were occasion- 
ally small squares and open places. The houses had 
gardens and interior courts, set out with orange, citron, 
and pomegranate trees, and refreshed by fountains, so that, 
as the edifices ranged above each other up the sides of the 
hills, they presented a delightful appearance of mingled 
grove and city. One of the hills was surmounted by the 
Alcazaba, a strong fortress, commanding all that part of 
the city ; the other by the Alhambra, a royal palace and 
warrior castle, capable of containing within its alcazar and 
towers a garrison of forty thousand men ; but possessing 
also its harem, the voluptuous abode of the Moorish mon- 
archs, laid out with courts and gardens, fountains, and 
baths, and stately halls, decorated in the most costly style 
of Oriental luxury. . . . Such was its lavish splendor 
that, even at the present day, the stranger, wandering 
through its silent courts and deserted halls, gazes with 
astonishment at gilded ceilings and fretted domes, the 
brilliancy and beauty of which have survived the vicissi- 
tudes of war and the silent dilapidation of ages. 

" The city was surrounded by high walls, three leagues 
in circuit, furnished with twelve gates, and a thousand 
and thirty towers. Its elevation above the sea, and the 
neighborhood of the Sierra Nevada, crowned with per- 
petual snows, tempered the fervid rays of summer ; so 
that, while other cities were panting with the sultry and 
stifling heat of the dog-days, the most salubrious breezes 
played through the marble halls of Granada. 

"The glory of the city, however, was its vega, or plain, 
which spread out to a circumference of thirty-seven 
leagues, surrounded by lofty mountains, and was proudly 

5 



66 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

compared to the famous plain of Damascus. It was a 
vast garden of delight, refreshed by numerous fountains 
and by the silver windings of the Xenil. The labor and 
ingenuity of the Moors had diverted the waters of this 
river into thousands of rills and streams, and diffused them 
over the whole surface of the plain. Indeed, they had 
wrought up this happy region to a degree of wonderful 
prosperity, and took a pride in decorating it, as if it had 
been a favorite mistress. The hills were clothed with 
orchards and vineyards, the valleys embroidered with 
gardens, and the wide plains covered with waving grain. 
Here were seen in profusion the orange, the citron, the 
fig, and the pomegranate, with great plantations of mul- 
berry-trees, from which was produced the finest silk. The 
vine clambered from tree to tree ; the grapes hung in rich 
clusters about the peasant's cottage, and the groves were 
rejoiced by the perpetual song of the nightingale. In a 
word, so beautiful was the earth, so pure the air, and so 
serene the sky of this delicious region, that the Moors 
imagined the paradise of their prophet to be situated in 
that part of the heaven which overhung the kingdom of 
Granada. " 

Many another conqueror might have brought 
devastation into such a scene as an inevitable 
and lamented concomitant of war, to be as far as 
possible restrained, and as soon as possible re- 
paired. But the deliberate policy of Ferdinand 
was to reduce all this to hopeless desolation. 
Holding that the Arabs could not be conquered 
while they were prosperous, he calmly planned 
to starve — not a garrison, not a city — but a whole 
kingdom into surrender. 

The unsparing nature of this devastation is best 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 67 

told in the calm words of Prescott's circumstan- 
tial description, 1 which includes not this single 
incursion only, but the ceaseless ravages that 
marked this war: 

" The Moorish wars under preceding monarchs had con- 
sisted of little else than cavalgadas, or inroads into the 
enemy's territory, which, pouring like a torrent over the 
land, swept away whatever was upon the surface, but left 
it in its essential resources wholly unimpaired. The 
bounty of nature soon repaired the ravages of man, and 
the ensuing harvest seemed to shoot up more abundantly 
from the soil, enriched by the blood of the husbandman. 
A more vigorous system of spoliation was now introduced. 
Instead of one campaign, the army took the field in spring 
and autumn, intermitting its efforts only during the in- 
tolerable heats of summer, so that the green crop had no 
time to ripen, ere it was trodden down under the iron heel 
of war. 

"The apparatus for devastation was also on a much 
greater scale than had ever before been witnessed. From 
the second year of the war, thirty thousand foragers were 
reserved for this service, which they effected by demolish- 
ing farmhouses, granaries, and mills (which last were ex- 
ceedingly numerous in a land watered by many small 
streams), by eradicating the vines, and laying waste the olive- 
gardens and plantations of oranges, almonds, mulberries, and 
all the rich varieties that grew luxuriant in this highly favored 
region. This merciless devastation extended for more 
than two leagues on either side of the line of march. " 

Crops may grow again, if an industrious and 
free population is left. Villages may be rebuilt, 
but when fruit-trees are cut down, and all that 

! " Ferdinand and Isabella," vol. i., ch. xi., p. 338. 



68 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

time has accumulated on great plantations de- 
stroyed, future generations are impoverished, and 
the way prepared for enduring desolation. All 
the centuries since have not restored to Spain 
what her own sovereigns, in the ten years' war 1 
against Granada, destroyed. 

After this, it is needless to dwell on particular 
instances of cruelty; as, for instance, to tell how 
Ferdinand and Isabella (Isabella being present in 
person) consigned the whole population of Mal- 
aga, some sixteen thousand persons, to slavery; 
how the hope of ransom was held out to the un- 
fortunates with the assurance that their jewels 
and other personal effects would be accepted in 
part payment ; and how, when these proved in- 
sufficient, the doom of slavery was carried into 
effect, the crafty Ferdinand thus securing both 
the persons and the property ; nor how the citi- 
zens of conquered Guadix, charged with "con- 
spiracy," were decoyed without their walls, and 
the gates shut against all the men, women, and 
children of a city, who were left to make for them- 
selves booths and hovels in the fields and gardens 
till the king's return; how Ferdinand, on his ar- 
rival, assured them he could do nothing till their 

1 From the capture of Zahara by the Spaniards, Decem- 
ber 26, 1481, to the surrender of Granada, January 2, 
1492. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 69 

case had been investigated, when all the guilty 
should be severely punished, but that, as he 
wished to be merciful, all who preferred to de- 
part at once were free to do so, taking with them 
their families and personal property; how the 
whole population thought it safer to go out home- 
less into the world than to trust to the investiga- 
tions of Spanish justice ; nor how the same hard 
choice was offered to the people of Baza, Almeria, 
and other cities, who, almost with one" consent, 
accepted the alternative of exile, leaving houses 
and lands, vineyards, gardens, and orchards to be 
appropriated by the conquering Spaniards. The 
foundations of the Spanish system, which holds 
dominion to consist in mere armed occupation, 
without regard to the resources of the earth or the 
welfare and happiness of the people, were then 
thoroughly laid — a system since carried out with 
unfaltering and unsparing rigor in every land on 
which the Spaniard has set foot for four hundred 
years. 



EXPULSION OF THE JEWS AND MOORS 

Failure of Persecution to Reclaim the Jews to 
Christianity — Persecutions in Other Lands — 
Peculiar Hardships of their Expulsion from 
Spain — Their Wealth and Culture — Offer of 
Thirty Thousand Ducats for Their Ransom — 
Torquemada Secures its Rejection — The Edict 
of Banishment — Jews Must Carry No Gold nor 
Silver — All their Property Suddenly Valueless — 
In Aragon Found to Be Hopelessly in Debt — 
The Scenes of Departure — The Number Banished 
— The Loss to the Kingdom — Era of Deceptive 
Prosperity — The Moral Injury to Spain — Expul- 
sion of the Moors — A Fatal Blow to the Agri- 
culture of Spain. 

The attempt at the enforced conversion of the 
Jews was found, at the end of ten years, to be 
utterly vain. Not even the auto da fe had been 
.able to convince the Israelites of the superior ex- 
cellence and divinity of Christianity. Then big- 
otry took a further stride, and demanded that their 
whole race be at once expelled from the kingdom. 

The Jews have been cruelly treated in many 
lands, and were even expelled in considerable 

70 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 71 

numbers from England in 1290, and from France 
in 1395, but nowhere did persecution bring to 
that unfortunate people such vast and remediless 
misfortune as in their enforced exile from Spain. 
As a race, they had inhabited the land from the 
times of the Eoman dominion, nearly or quite 
fifteen hundred years. Spain was their ancestral 
home, which they regarded as a second Palestine. 
The soil of Spain was consecrated by the graves 
of their fathers for many generations. The Span- 
ish language was their native tongue. They were 
Spaniards even more truly than the descendants 
of the Visigothic conquerors who, on their first 
coming, had found them there. They were a 
cultured, peaceful, industrious, and wealthy race, 
exhibiting in Spain, as elsewhere, their unequaled 
genius for finance. In fact, their wealth may be 
considered in great part the cause of their ruin, 
envious references to their riches being curiously 
mixed up with the arguments of bigotry in the 
writings of the chroniclers of the time. It is 
even asserted that the estates of the great nobles 
were so largely mortgaged to wealthy Jews — in 
part, no doubt, on account of the prodigal expense 
incurred in the War of Granada — that they saw 
no way to discharge the debt but this compre- 
hensive expatriation of the creditors. But the 
Jews of Spain were not mere traders and usurers. 



72 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

The common people were proficient in the various 
industrial vocations, which at once secured them 
a comfortable subsistence and made them useful 
and valuable citizens. Their physicians were at 
the very front of the profession of medicine, 
which they had greatly advanced by diligently 
collating the discoveries of their travelers in the 
most distant lands. Their families were care- 
fully, and many of them delicately nurtured, and 
ill fitted to bear the hardships of sudden exile. 

While the edict for their expulsion was under 
consideration, they offered to the sovereigns a 
ransom of thirty thousand ducats, which had al- 
most availed, when the fierce Torquemada burst 
into the royal apartment with a crucifix, exclaim- 
ing, " Judas Iscariot sold his Master for thirty 
pieces of silver. Your majesties would sell Him 
anew for thirty thousand. There He is! Take 
Him and barter Him away !" Flinging down the 
crucifix upon the table, the fanatical persecutor 
rushed from the room. 1 From that hour all hesi- 
tation was at an end. The edict for the expul- 
sion of the Jews was signed at Granada, March 
30, 1492. By its terms all Jews were required 
to depart from the kingdom by the end of July 
of the same year, and never to return on any pre- 

1 Prescott, "Ferdinand and Isabella, " vol. ii. , ch. xvii., 
p. 135. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 73 

text whatever, under penalty of death. They were 
permitted to dispose of their effects, and to take 
the proceeds with them in any form, except that 
they must carry no silver or gold out of the 
country. This last stipulation, of course, made 
the accompanying permission almost worthless, 
as bills of exchange were then rare and difficult 
to obtain, while the time allowed was appallingly 
brief. The property of a whole people was for 
sale at once, while all buyers knew that the 
owners must abandon it, even if unsold,, at the 
end of four months. Not only houses and lands, 
but agricultural implements, costly furniture, 
books, paintings, rugs, and tapestries, and even 
jewels of the prohibited silver or gold, must all 
be left behind. All their wealth was in an in- 
stant valueless. A whole people was reduced to 
destitution. In Aragon, it was even found that 
the Jews were so deeply in debt that it was 
necessary to sequestrate their estates for the bene- 
fit of their creditors. " Strange, indeed," says Pres- 
cott, " that the balance should be found against a 
people who have been everywhere conspicuous for 
their commercial sagacity and resources." 

The scenes attending the expulsion are thus 
described by the same historian : 

"When the period of departure arrived, all the principal 
routes through the country might be seen swarming with 



74 TEE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

emigrants, old and young, the sick and the helpless, men, 
women, and children, mingled promiscuously together, 
some mounted on horses or mules, but far the greater part 
undertaking their painful pilgrimage on foot. The sight 
of so much misery touched even the Spaniards with pity, 
though none might succor them ; for the hard inquisitor, 
Torquemada, enforced the ordinance to that effect, by de- 
nouncing heavy ecclesiastical censures on all who should 
presume to violate it. The fugitives were distributed 
along various routes, being determined in their destination 
by accidental circumstances, much more than any knowl- 
edge of the respective countries to which they were bound. " 

The lowest estimate places the number of the 
exiles at one hundred and sixty thousand. The 
heart sickens at the dreadful record of their suf- 
ferings in various lands, from famine and pesti- 
lence, and from the savage hordes of Africa. It 
is gratifying to note that France and England had 
by this time so far remitted their persecutions as 
to allow some of the wanderers to find asylum 
there. 

The economic loss incurred by the sudden ex- 
pulsion of such a number of skilled tradesmen 
and artisans, and industrious citizens, has been 
generally conceded. It must be remembered that 
these hundred and sixty thousand people were not 
only producers, but also consumers, and we have 
learned that prosperity depends as absolutely on 
the consumption as on the production of the re- 
sults of labor. The market for all goods produced 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 75 

in or brought to the Peninsula was at once 
reduced by the loss of this vast number of con- 
sumers. 

It has, indeed, been objected, that the injury 
could not have been great, because it was in the 
period immediately succeeding the expulsion of 
the Jews that Spain attained her greatest pros- 
perity. Her cities became populous, wealthy, and 
beautiful; her monarchs and nobles vied with 
each other in stately splendor; her schools and 
universities, under the wise and generous patron- 
age of Isabella, were full of students, and schol- 
arly pursuits among the young nobility took the 
place of the aimless or vicious luxury to which 
the possession of great wealth so often leads. 

But all this prosperity was like the sudden 
strength of a patient in the paroxysms of a wa- 
sting fever, or like the sudden and abundant fruit- 
age of a girdled tree, putting forth its amplest 
energies because it is stricken with death. The 
confiscation of the estates of Jews and Moors 
had the effect of opening Oklahomas throughout 
Spain, and gave new opportunities to enterprising 
Spaniards. The unification of the kingdom, the 
cessation of the costly and pernicious intestine 
warfare, the successes of the Spanish arms in 
Italy, the opening of commerce westward to 
America, with all the opportunities for adven- 



y 



76 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

turous spirits there, and the treasure brought 
from the New World to the Old, all tended to 
stimulate every form of industrial and intellec- 
tual activity, as long as the tide was directed by 
sovereigns whose general policy, in spite of great 
fundamental errors of administration, was liberal 
and enlightened. But those errors were destined 
to exert a more far-reaching and long-enduring 
influence than the personal virtues of the sover- 
eigns that struggled to counteract them. That 
the prosperity of the closing part of the reign of 
Ferdinand and Isabella was not sound and well 
rooted is shown by its swift and utter collapse, 
even the splendid military prestige of Spain being 
lost in less than a hundred and fifty years. 

The moral effect upon the Spanish character 
of such a wholesale expulsion of peaceful citizens 
can not be computed. By the terms of the edict, 
every subject was forbidden "to harbor, succor, 
or minister to the necessities of any Jew after the 
expiration of the time fixed for his departure "- — 
a prohibition enforced with unsparing rigor. 
Along all the roads of Spain, the residents must 
see crowds of harmless people toiling wearily on, 
the old, the sick, mothers with little babes in 
their arms, all going forth to hopeless exile, and 
none might give them so much as a cup of water 
or an hour of rest under a hospitable roof. To 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 77 

witness misery with no attempt to alleviate is a 
fearfully heart-hardening process. 

The same work was done, but more gradually 
and with some mitigating circumstances (through 
the protection and intervention of the then pow- 
erful Sultan of Turkey), in the expulsion of the 
Moors or Moriscos, as they had come to be known 
After various persecutions goading them to rebel- 
lion, and political severities that drove great 
numbers to voluntary exile, the last of the race 
that retained their distinctive nationality were 
banished in 1609, under the reign of Philip III. 
Spain thus banished 500,000 of the most indus- 
trious and ingenious of her adult population, all 
the children under four years of age being forci- 
bly taken from their parents, to be brought up in 
the Christian faith! 

The expulsion of this people was a fatal blow 
to the agriculture of Spain; for the Moors were 
pre-eminent as cultivators of the soil. Districts 
once fertile and flourishing under their culture are 
now barren and desert, and Spain has long been 
dependent upon her colonies or upon foreign na- 
tions for crops which the despised and banished 
Moors produced so abundantly that they could 
export them to all the marts of the world. 1 
1 See ch. iv., p. 60. 



VI 
THE SPANIARD IN THE WEST INDIES 

Possible and Actual Results of Spain's Discovery of 
America — Gentleness and Friendliness of the 
Islanders — Their Enslavement — Responsibility of 
Columbus — Isabella Opposes the System of 
Repartimientos — Attempts to Regulate it — The 
Condition of Native Laborers — Their Extermina- 
tion. 

The greatest achievement of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, the discovery of America, fell to the lot of 
Spain, through the sagacity and courage of her 
queen, Isabella, in accepting the enterprise of the 
Genoese enthusiast, whom every other maritime 
nation of Europe had repulsed. Just as the 
Spaniards had conquered the unity of the chief 
part of their own peninsula, Providence laid at 
their feet the gift of a New World. When we 
think of the Spain of that day, with her ample 
sea-coast, commanding at once the Atlantic and 
the Mediterranean, her brave and hardy people, 
her united provinces and victorious armies, first 
of all the nations to discover and conquer the 
Western World, we pause in wonder at the vision, 

78 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 79 

on the one hand, of her possible advance, and on 
the other, of her actual failure and decline. It 
is not what men or nations receive, but what 
they are and do, that determines destiny. The • 
Spanish people were utterly unfit to be pioneers 
of civilization or founders of enduring empire, 
or trusty guardians of the means of human 
welfare, prosperity, and happiness, even when 
these were thrust within their grasp. 

All accounts agree as to the innocence, gentle- 
ness, and trustful good-nature of the inhabitants 
of the islands first discovered. It is mentioned 
as a striking proof of their simplicity, that they 
supposed the Spaniards to have come from 
heaven. We need only read the Spaniards' own 
accounts to learn how they brought upon these 
fair, fertile, and peaceful lands a visitation of 
hell. The proud hidalgos, who despised work, and 
the desperate adventurers, who hated it, threatened 
with starvation on the shores of the new lands 
where they had expected to pick up gold, saw no 
remedy at once so prompt and so effectual as to 
set the natives to work, whether they liked it or 
not. Here were the laborers ready to their hand, 
needing only to be enslaved. 

While Columbus cannot be wholly acquitted 
of blame in this matter, yet historians agree that 
he was not primarily responsible for the enslave- 



80 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

ment of the natives, but yielded to the demands 
of his reckless and mutinous followers, whom he, 
as a foreigner, could so ill restrain. 

Irving expressly exempts Columbus, saying : 

" When Columbus was in a manner compelled to assign 
lands to the rebellious followers of Francisco Roldan in 
1499, he had made an arrangement that the caciques in 
their vicinity should, in lieu of tribute, furnish a number 
of their subjects to assist them in cultivating their estates. 
This . . . was the beginning of the disastrous system of 
repartimientos, or distributions of Indians. " x 

Queen Isabella strenuously opposed the repar- 
timientos, and her influence held the system in 
check for a considerable time. A council was at 
length appointed to consider the matter. Then 
it was urged that the natives would not work 
unless compelled. It was added with charming 
naivete that they would not associate with the 
Spaniards if allowed to keep away, from which 
it was concluded that they would have no chance 
to learn the Christian religion. To be sure, the 
idea of Christianity that an Indian would get by 
working as a slave on a Spanish plantation would 
be such as to make any respectable system of 
heathenism seem divine by comparison. But 
this consideration naturally did not occur to the 
minds of the council, and the royal consent was 

1 Irving, " Columbus, " vol. ii. , bk. xvi. , ch. i. , p. 515 ; 
cf . fuller statement, bk. xii. , ch. iv. , pp. 263, 264. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 81 

given to the enforced labor of the natives, with 
the requirement that they should be paid, and be 
instructed in the Christian religion. 

In the words of Prescott, 1 " the humane regula- 
tions of Isabella were construed with their usual 
latitude by the Spaniards." How they were con- 
strued, Irving tells more in detail : 2 

"They were separated often the distance of several 
days' journey from their wives and children, and doomed 
to intolerable labor of all kinds, extorted by the cruel in- 
fliction of the lash. For food they had the cassava bread, 
an unsubstantial support for men obliged to labor ; some- 
times a scanty portion of pork was distributed among 
a great number of them, scarce a mouthful to each. 
When the Spaniards who superintended the mines were at 
their repast, says Las Casas, the famished Indians scram- 
bled under the table, like dogs, for any 'bone thrown 
them. After they had gnawed and sucked it, they 
pounded it between stones, and mixed it with their cas- 
sava bread, that nothing of so precious a morsel might be 
lost. As to those who labored in the fields, they never 
tasted either flesh or fish ; a little cassava bread and a few 
roots were their support. While the Spaniards thus with- 
held the nourishment necessary to sustain their health 
and strength, they exacted a degree of labor sufficient to 
break down the most vigorous man. If the Indians fled 
from this incessant toil and barbarous coercion, and took 
refuge in the mountains, they were hunted out like wild 
beasts, scourged in the most inhuman manner, and laden 
with chains to prevent a second escape. Many perished 
long before their term of labor had expired. Those who 

1 "Ferdinand and Isabella, " vol. ii., p. 469. 

2 "Life of Columbus," vol. ii., bk. xvii., pp. 516-519. 

6 



82 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

survived their term of six or eight months were permitted 
to return to their homes until the next term commenced. 
But their homes were often forty, sixty, and eighty 
leagues distant. They had nothing to sustain them 
through the journey but a few roots or agi peppers, or a 
little cassava bread. Worn down by long toil and cruel 
hardships, which their feeble constitutions were incapable 
of sustaining, many had not strength to perform the jour- 
ney, but sank down and died by the way. . . . ' I have 
found many dead in the road/ says Las Casas, 'others 
gasping under the trees, and others in the pangs of death, 
faintly crying, " Hunger ! hunger ! " ' 1 Those who reached 
their homes most commonly found them desolate. Dur- 
ing the eight months they had been absent, their wives 
and children had either perished or wandered away ; the 
fields on which they depended for food were overrun with 
weeds, and nothing was left them but to lie down, ex- 
hausted and despairing, and die at the threshold of their 
habitations. 

" Twelve years had not elapsed since the discovery of 
the island [of Hispaniola], and several hundred thousand 
of its native inhabitants had perished, miserable victims 
to the grasping avarice of the white men. " 

The men who did this are the "heroic an- 
cestry " to which Governor-General Blanco appeals 
in his recent proclamation. We may say, in the 
words addressed to the scribes and Pharisees of 
old, "Truly ye bear witness unto yourselves that 
ye allow the deeds of your fathers." The starva- 
tion and extermination of the Cubans to-day are 
strictly in the line of Spanish conquest and rule 

1 Las Casas, Hist. Ind. , lib. ii. , cap. 14 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 83 

for four hundred years. The reconcentrados of 
the nineteenth century answer to the reparti- 
mientos of the sixteenth/ Spanish character and 
dominion — Spanish ferocity, savagery, and mer- 
cilessness — hold on their way through the cen- 
turies with an unfaltering, unpardonable, and 
intolerable consistency. The story of Hispaniola 
is that of all the beautiful West India islands. 



VII 

THE SPANIARD IN MEXICO AND PERU 

Mexico and the Aztec Race— Their Civilization and 
Religion — Human Sacrifices — Prowess of the 
Spaniards — The Landing in Mexico — Hospitable 
Reception — The Emperor's Present — Discord in 
the Empire Fomented by the Spaniards — Seizure 
of the Emperor Montezuma — Rebellion in the 
Capital — Disastrous Retreat— Battle of Otumba — 
Cortes Strikes down Native Commander— Rout of 
the Aztecs — Cortes Returns to and Besieges Mexico 
— Death of Montezuma — Politic Cruelty of Cortes 
— Tlascalan Spies— Massacre of Cholula — Chiefs 
Burnt Alive — Guatemozin Put to Death — Pizarro 
Compared with Cortes — His Kind Reception in 
Peru — Capture of the Inca — Treasures of Peru — 
Brutal Cruelties of Pizarro — Repartimientos— 
Decline of the Nation — Mexico and Peru Throw off 
the Spanish Yoke. 

Just across the Gulf to the west of the islands 
first discovered lay the most promising land of 
the New World. Along the shore is a torrid 
stretch of mingled desert and wilderness. Back 
of this rise the hills leading up to the tablelands, 
which in that time were well watered and cov- 
ered with the fruits of a semi-tropical climate. 

84 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 85 

Still farther west, volcanic ridges raise their 
highest peaks into the regions of eternal snow; 
and beyond, a sharp descent leads down to the 
Pacific Ocean. Midway between the eastern and 
western seas, a valley, hollowed out of the table- 
land, holds five small lakes. In this valley of 
Mexico, noted for its beauty and fertility, dwelt 
the strange Aztec race, differing in language, cus- 
toms, and race from the natives of the islands 
and of the regions to north and south. They 
had built great cities ; had developed agriculture 
and many arts ; and maintained a stable monarchy. 
Their religion was a kind of nature worship, but 
was accompanied with the horrors of human 
sacrifice. In many respects, their civilization 
resembled that of the ancient Egyptians. 

It may be true that their empire had already 
reached its zenith, and must inevitably have de- 
clined. 1 It is certain that its religion, with its 
human sacrifices and cannibalism, was working 
increasing degradation. But it is also unques- 
tionable that there were in this people elements 
of power and high character well worthy of pres- 
ervation. Had the Eoman taken this fair land, 
he would have preserved its people, repressed 
their worst abuses, grafted his own race and cus- 

1 Prescott, "Conquest of Mexico, " vol. iii., bk. vi., ch. 
viii. 



86 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

toms upon the sturdy stock already growing, and 
developed a great people. Such a policy was 
never understood by Spain. 

The Spaniards started in to the conquest of 
these new lands with an ' impetuous valor scarce 
equaled in history. From overwhelming num- 
bers fighting for their homes, mere handfuls of 
Spanish knights wrested great territories. The 
Spaniard proved himself the equal of the Eoman 
in conquering power. Had there been in him 
the Koman's ability to govern and develop the 
conquered lands, the map of America would to- 
day be widely different, and Spain would be the 
greatest power of the world. But Spanish cruelty 
and lust destroyed the fruits of Spanish valor, 
while they made Spain's name a word of terror 
such as not even Home's had ever been. 

In the spring of the year 1519, Hernando 
Cortes landed with some six hundred men, where 
now stands Vera Cruz. For cavalry, he had six- 
teen horses; for artillery, ten cannon and four 
falconets. This little force had been sent 
from Cuba to explore the mainland, under 
authority of the governor — less than seven hun- 
dred men to conquer a populous and warlike 
empire. 

Fortunately for the Spaniards, no resistance 
was made to their landing. On the contrary, 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 87 

they received a most hospitable reception. The 
natives set up booths to shelter the Spaniards 
from the scorching sun; brought them freely the 
food-products of the country, and served them 
with no recompense. 

The Aztec emperor, Montezuma, forbade their 
approaching the capital, and directed them to 
return in peace to the land whence they came. 
With this message he sent a gift of gold, silver, 
and precious stones, worth something like a quar- 
ter of a million dollars. Better for him had he 
sent a sheaf of arrows and a bold defiance ! The 
undreamed-of wealth fired . the hearts of the 
Spaniards; and when they learned that there 
were divisions in the empire and that some of 
the tribes would side with them against Monte- 
zuma, the doom of Mexico was sealed. Forming 
alliances with tribes hostile to Montezuma, crush- 
ing those hostile to himself, Cortes made his 
way to the seat of the hitherto unconquered 
emperor. 

Montezuma doubted whether to receive these 
men as the resistless messengers of the gods, or to 
muster all his forces to drive them from the 
land. The Spaniards had no wavering, no scruples, 
no gratitude. With one stroke of Spanish perfidy 
and boldness, they seized the emperor himself, 
made him declare that he visited them of his 



88 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

own will, and used him at the same time as mas- 
ter of his people and hostage of his foes. For a 
time, the victory seemed perfect. The prince, 
whom his people still reverenced and obeyed as 
absolute autocrat, the Spaniards had in their 
hands as an absolute tool. 

But terrible conflicts were to come. Velas- 
quez, governor of Cuba, by whom Cortes had 
been sent out, learned that his lieutenant was 
conquering too much, and sent a force to arrest 
him. Cortes was obliged to leave the capital to 
confront this new danger. He surprised and 
seized the leader, won the followers over to his 
own standard, and turned the hostile army into a 
reinforcement, with which he returned to the 
capital. But in his absence, his lieutenant, 
Alvarado, had perpetrated a wanton massacre of 
six hundred Mexican nobles, and the whole city 
had risen with a cry for vengeance. Cortes suc- 
ceeded in throwing himself into the fortress 
where his countrymen were besieged, after which 
the attack was renewed with such terrific fury as 
drove the conquerors at last to attempt their es- 
cape by night. Caught and hemmed in on the 
single narrow causeway leading from the city, 
they were assailed by overwhelming numbers. 
The slaughter through the night hours was terri- 
ble, and it seems wonderful that any survived. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 89 

After the first perils of the escape, as they crossed 
the mountains, their reduced and weary band was 
brought face to face with a multitudinous host in 
the valley of Otumba. Fairly swallowed up in 
the throng, the army would have been defeated 
where defeat meant extermination, but for the 
sagacity and personal courage of Cortfe, who, 
sweeping his glance over the deadly field, recog- 
nized by his splendid dress and equipage the 
Aztec chief amid the press, plunged into the sea 
of foes, and slew the leader with his own hand 
The chieftain's fall was the signal for the total 
rout of the vast Aztec host. 

By a wonderful union of valor and address, 
Cortfe secured a vast army of allies from^ the 
native tribes hostile to the Aztec domination. 
He also captured and won to his standard new 
forces of Spaniards whom the unlucky Velasquez 
sent to oppose him. So reinforced, he returned 
to the capital, now armed and fortified by the 
heroic young emperor Guatemozin, who had suc- 
ceeded to the throne of Montezuma, the latter 
having been mortally wounded by his own sub- 
jects when he stepped into the breach to plead 
for his Spanish captors as his "friends." "Dog!" 
"Woman!" they shouted, when they heard that 
plea, and struck him down with a shower of 
missiles. After a siege of three months almost 



90 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

unexampled in history, the capital fell, and the 
conquest of Mexico was complete. 

Cortes seems not to have been cruel from pas- 
sion, but on principle. Where he could secure 
submission by mild measures he preferred to do 
so ; but where he thought it profitable to intimi- 
date, human life and suffering were not one 
moment considered. When he discovered fifty 
Tlasealan spies in his camp, he simply cut off 
the hands of the whole party, and sent the poor 
wretches, thus maimed and agonized, back to 
their people — an act that had the effect to cow 
and humble that powerful nation, who eventually 
became his most efficient allies. This, it should 
be observed, was an act of mercy, since by the 
laws of war he might have put them all to 
death. 

In the great, sacred city of Cholula, he detected 
a conspiracy against himself, and anticipated it 
by a ferocious massacre of an unwarned crowd 
whom he had decoyed into a walled inclosure 
under his guns, then by the sack of the beautiful, 
populous, thriving city. A poor little town of 
sixteen thousand people now occupies the ancient 
site. For the assassination of two Spanish sol- 
diers, Cortes burned alive sixteen chiefs of the 
highest rank in the courtyard of the captive 
Montezuma. It would be vain to attempt to 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 91 

recite the whole catalogue of barbarities. Every 
one of them had, indeed, a military effectiveness. 
Cortes knew when it would pay to be cruel — 
something that his own lieutenants could never 
learn. When they perpetrated a massacre — as in 
the case of Alvarado in the capital — they mad- 
dened the people, whom the terrible blows of 
Cortes always cowed and subdued. Yet even the 
poor excuse of military effectiveness cannot be 
pleaded for the murder of the brave young em- 
peror Guatemozin, on a trumped-up charge, long 
after all hostilities, or possibility of hostilities, 
had ceased. As the heathen was led to the fatal 
tree, he turned to his captor, saying, " I knew 
what it was to trust to your false promises, 
Malinche [the Indian name given to Cortes] ; I 
knew that you had destined me to this fate, since 
I did not fall by my own hand when you entered 
my city of Tenochtillan. Why do you slay me 
thus unjustly? God will demand it of you ! " x 

The conquest of Peru reads like a repetition of 
that of Mexico, with harsher lines and darker 
shades. While Cortes was a cavalier, of ancient 
family, and highly educated for a soldier of that 
day, Pizarro was a foundling and a swineherd, 
and unable to read or write. There was a corre- 

1 Prescott, "Conquest of Mexico, " vol. iii., bk. vii. , ch. 
iii., p. 273. 



92 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

sponding difference in the quality of the followers 
whom he drew around his standard. Pizarro 
began his career of conquest in 1532. He found 
in Peru a civilization higher and more humane 
than that of Mexico, and a people gentler and 
more refined. He was received with the most 
confiding good-nature and nospitality. He repaid 
it with the most abominable, purposeless, and 
brutal cruelties. Like Cortes, he seized the em- 
peror, or Inca, and extorted all his treasure as 
ransom, including the seven thousand plates of 
pure gold, each "the size of the lid of a chest," 
torn from the sacred temple of the sun. When 
he had extorted the uttermost ransom, he burnt 
the captive monarch at the stake on charges that 
satisfied a drum-head court-martial of Spanish 
captains, chiefly for having been a heathen before 
he had ever heard of even such Christianity as 
the Spaniards came to bring. In negotiating 
with the successor of the murdered monarch, a 
messenger of Pizarro was killed by a party of 
natives. Pizarro had captured a wife of the Inca, 
a young and beautiful woman. On this guiltless 
and harmless woman the Spanish commander 
wreaked his revenge, ordering her to be stripped 
naked, bound to a tree, scourged with rods in 
presence of his ruffian army, and then shot to 
death with arrows, all which the captive endured 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 93 

with Indian fortitude, without one complaint or 
groan. 1 

It is needless to pursue further the record of 
sickening cruelties that turned the fair and pros- 
perous empire of the Incas to a desolation. The 
manufactures of delicate fabrics; the cunning 
workmanship in silver and gold; the exquisite 
sculpture of emeralds and other precious stones; 
the architecture that piled massive hewn stones 
of granite and porphyry with such perfect junc- 
ture that a knife-blade cannot even now be thrust 
between the stones ; the great flocks of llamas that 
were pastured on the mountains; the scientific 
agriculture, bringing fertility to wide, rainless 
districts, so that poverty was practically un- 
known; the great system of roads, aqueducts, 
and bridges, reminding one of the works of an- 
cient Eome — all were whelmed in a ruin, which 
the centuries since have not been long enough 
to rebuild. 

In both Mexico and Peru the wasting system 
of repartimientos, sketched in a previous chapter, 2 
was introduced. Both were subjected to the nar- 
row Spanish system of colonial rapacity and mo- 
nopoly that sought to wring from the land the 

1 Prescott, "Conquest of Peru, "vol. ii., bk. iv., ch. iii., 
p. 110. 

2 Ch. vL,pp. 80, 81. 



94 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

utmost momentary riches and to turn all the 
streams of trade into Spanish channels only. 
Both countries languished under the oppressive 
system, till within the present century they threw 
off the hated yoke, Peru in 1820, and Mexico in 
1824. The departure of the Spaniard from 
Mexico was signalized by the same cruelties as 
his advent. In the fortunately vain attempt to 
suppress the insurrection, the Spanish pursued a 
war of extermination against the new Mexicans, 
who were largely of their own blood and race, 
every commander being allowed at his own dis- 
cretion to hunt down and slaughter the insur- 
gents like brutes. It cannot be wondered at that 
colonies which have been for centuries under 
such tutelage should be slow in recovery, even 
after achieving independence. 



VIII 

THE SPANIARD ON THE THRONE 

Philip II. a Typical Spaniard— His Personal Ap- 
pearance — Vicious Indulgences— Fathomless Du- 
plicity — Promises Set Aside — Death of His Young 
Wife— Marries Mary of England — Her Character 
and Death — Imprisonment and Death of Philip's 
Son, Don Carlos — Death of the Marquis of Bergen 
— Perfidious Secret Execution of Montigny — 
Philip's Bigotry — Organizing Netherland Per- 
secution — Recovers Health on News of a Massa- 
cre— " Eaten of Worms "—His Death— Results of 
His Reign. 

Chakles the Fifth had been cosmopolitan. 
He succeeded to the crown, as Charles I. of Spain ; 
by his election as Emperor of Germany, June 
28, 1519, he became Charles V. of Germany, 
by which name he is best known. His history 
belongs more to Europe than to Spain. His son, 
Philip the Second, who was born as Valladolid, 
May 21, 1527, was simply and only a Span- 
iard — the first thoroughly typical Spanish king. 
He spoke no tongue but Spanish. He was not a 

95 



96 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

soldier like his father, and for that reason loved 
to be painted in complete suits of gilded armor. 
Nor did he inherit his father's gross intemperance, 
but he excelled him, if possible, in lascivious 
excesses, and those of the meanest and most un- 
kingly type. In the words of Motley : * " He was 
grossly licentious. It was his chief amusement 
to issue forth at night disguised, that he might 
indulge in vulgar and miscellaneous incontinence 
in the common haunts of vice." 

To these personal habits he joined a fathomless 
dissimulation and duplicity. An example of this 
may be seen in the promises made in answer 
to an embassy from the Netherlands in 1556. 
He gave his written promise that pardon — with 
many reservations — should be granted for past 
offences, and that the Papal Inquisition should 
be discontinued. As soon as this document was 
sent out, he called a notary and witnesses, and 
made a written deposition that this pardon had 
been extorted from him and was consequently 
null and void. Then he wrote to the Pope to an- 
nounce that his promise regarding the In- 
quisition could have no force, because he had 
no right to make such a promise without the 
pontiff's consent. Thus with two strokes of the 

1 "Rise of the Dutch Eepublic, " vol. i., pt. i., ch. ii., 
p. 145. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 97 

pen he absolved himself from his own solemn, 
royal pledge. 1 

His ) 7 oung wife, Maria of Portugal, having 
died in 1543, Philip, in 1554, for reasons of state, 
married Queen Mary of England — that daughter 
of Henry the Eighth known in history as " Bloody 
Mary" — who was eleven years older than him- 
self, ill-tempered and ill-looking, and in wretch- 
edly ill health. In this alliance he spent some 
miserable years, trying to smooth down his cold 
and savage demeanor enough to induce the Eng- 
lish to declare him king — which the stubborn 
islanders steadily refused to do. Not even the 
funeral pyres of Smithfield, answering those of 
Seville and Madrid, could bind the royal pair in 
the bliss of mutual bigotry. When, at length, 
the expected child of this ill-starred marriage, 
for whose promised advent all the bells of Eng- 
land were set pealing, proved a myth, and Mary 
died in 1558, disappointed and unlamented, 
Philip planned to revenge , himself on England 
by the " Invincible Armada," the fate of which has 
made its name a byword in history. 

Like his ancestor, John II. of Aragon, Philip 
II. had a son by his first marriage, a new Don 
Carlos. True to the family traditions, the father 

1 Motley, "Dutch Republic, " vol. ii., pt. ii., ch. viii., 
pp. 5, 6. 

7 



98 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

quarreled with and imprisoned his son. The 
prince seems to have feared some such fate, for 
he slept with sword, dagger, and firearms at his 
pillow. The king put on a suit of armor, a hel- 
met on his head, and went with five noblemen 
and twelve soldiers to the prince's room at mid- 
night. He prudently sent the lords — whose lives 
were so much less precious — to secure the weap- 
ons. Then the armed king appeared, and the 
poor youth could resist no longer. He soon died 
in prison in that mysterious way common in 
Spain. This was the only child of the young 
wife, Maria of Portugal, who had died almost in 
giving him birth, and for whose sake much might 
have been forgiven. 

The fate of two envoys, the Marquis of Bergen 
and Baron Montigny, sent by the government of 
the Netherland provinces to present their griev- 
ances, well illustrates the monarch's character. 
As ambassadors, their lives were sacred by the 
immemorial laws of nations. They were held in 
wearisome captivity till it was found that Bergen 
was slowly dying of an obscure disease, aggra- 
vated by homesickness. Philip sent one of his 
subservient nobles, Euy Gomez, Prince of Eboli, 
to the sick man, 1 to condole with him as a friend, 
but with careful written instructions, that if he 

1 Prescott, "Philip II., "vol. ii., bk. iii., ch. vi., p. 315. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 99 

found he was sure to die, he should promise him 
a speedy return to the Netherlands ; but if there 
was a chance of his getting well, he should only 
hold out a distant possibility of return. Bergen 
soon after died in captivity. 

Montigny was reserved for a darker fate. He 
was tried and condemned by the Council of Blood 
in Brussels, while he himself was closely impris- 
oned in Spain. Philip conferred with his coun- 
cil as to the means of executing the sentence 
without public scandal. The council recom- 
mended slow poison. But Philip adjudged that 
method not severe enough. The condemned man 
must know, and the public must not know, that 
he was executed. Letters to the king, telling 
first of Montigny's severe illness and later of his 
death, were written at Madrid, under the king's 
supervision. These were given to certain officers, 
who took them to Valladolid, six miles from 
Montigny's prison at Simancas. There the death- 
doing party waited, while the king's physician 
daily visited the prisoner, who was in perfect 
health, and every day gave out more and more 
alarming reports of his illness. When all was 
ready, the notary, priest, and executioner, all 
sworn to secrecy under pain of death, left Val- 
ladolid by night, strangled the baron with all 
due formalities in his cell by night, returned by 



100 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

night to Valladolid, and sent to the king the let- 
ter relating Montigny's death from fever, which 
the monarch had put into their hands ere they 
left Madrid. The victim was buried in the robe 
of a Franciscan monk, which came up high enough 
on the neck to cover the marks of strangulation. 
It is noticeable that Don Carlos was also buried 
in a Franciscan robe. ] Philip sent the letters 
which his agents had signed, to be given out 
publicly by Alva in the Netherlands, and with 
.them, for Alva's reading only, a full account of 
the real infamous facts, of which the monarch 
had not the grace to be ashamed. 

So perfectly had he covered his trail, that it 
was hidden for centuries from the eyes of the 
world, till the researches of our own day brought 
it to light in the letters of the king and his min- 
isters preserved in the Archives of Simancas. 2 
Since Spain's ideal monarch could thus perfidi- 
ously do to death one who came to him in the 
sacred character of herald and envoy, no man 
need wonder that when an American battleship 
is blown up at night in a Spanish port, and at a 
buoy to which she had been towed by a Spanish 
pilot, in a time of profound peace, the deed should 
be viewed in the light of the history of the past; 

^rescott, " Philip II., "vol. ii., bk. iv,, ch. vii., p. 582. 
2 Ibid., vol. ii., bk. iii.,ch. vi.,p, 309. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 101 

and that all Americans should believe that there 
may have been a countryman of the second Philip 
base enough to do the deed, and crafty enough to 
cover his tracks till the sea shall give up its dead. 
But Philip's bigotry was as unlimited as his 
vices. It was all he had of religion, and had 
become the consuming passion of his narrow, 
profligate, perfidious, and ferocious soul. This 
led to the long series of almost incredible out- 
rages that mark the sad, grand story of the Neth- 
erlands, as will be related in the following chap- 
ter. He found the Spanish nation, generals, 
nobles, and common soldiers, all the unanimous 
and cordial instruments of his inhuman barbar- 
ity; but through all those dreadful scenes Philip 
himself was presiding with tireless industry, 
writing out with his own hand endless pages and 
folios of instructions ; sending from his palace at 
Madrid or the Escorial to his governors in the 
Netherlands accusations against the humblest of- 
fenders, with minute descriptions of their personal 
appearance as detailed to him by his retinue of 
spies, that no mistake might prevent their appre- 
hension. 1 The tentacles of the. royal octopus 
were feeling about every hamlet and every home 
from the Peninsula to the shores of the Northern 

1 Motley, "Dutch Republic, " vol. i., pt. ii., ch. ii., p. 
279. 



102 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

Sea. Nor did he ever find any subordinate so 
cruel, nor any deed so barbarous, as not to receive 
his full approval. The news of the capture of 
Harlem, and the slaughter in cold blood of 2,300 
of its citizens, after promises of protection, so 
greatly delighted him as to cause his prompt 
recovery from dangerous illness. Yet all this 
craft and cruelty at last utterly failed. The 
league against the Huguenot king, in which 
Philip had joined, was defeated, and the Span- 
ish contingent of picked cavalry cut to pieces 
by Henry of Navarre in the famous battle of 
Ivry in 1590. Philip was forced to acknowledge 
the well-won title of Henry IV. to the crown of 
France. In the Netherlands, the son of the mur- 
dered Orange, Maurice of Nassau, was entering on 
that career of success in which he defeated the 
Spanish veterans on many a hard-fought field; 
the fleets of the Netherlands were victorious on 
the sea, and the independence of the Dutch Eepub- 
lic had become an accomplished though not yet 
a formally recognized fact. 

After reading all the story, it is impossible not 
to feel a grim satisfaction that this royal monster 
of perfidy, ingratitude, tyranny, cruelty, and lust 
at last met the fate of Herod Agrippa: "He 
was eaten of worms and gave up the ghost. " l 
l Actsxif, 23. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 103 

Defeated in the most cherished aims of his life, 
he was carried painfully to his favorite palace of 
the Escorial to die. ' The manner of his death 
is an emblem of the irredeemable corruption to 
which he had reduced his kingdom, which has re- 
sisted alike the surgery of war and the medica- 
tion of statesmanship for four hundred years. 

Philip II. was the last king of Spain. There 
have since been many tenants of the throne, but 
these titular princes have not made the history 
of Spain. The kingdom has been really governed, 
not by its kings, but by ambitious ministers, or 
unworthy favorites of king or queen, with here and 
there a lonely statesman. History concerns it- 
self, not with the succession of princes named 
Philip or Charles, but with such names as Lerma, 
Olivarez, Haro, Mthard, Medina-Coeli, Oropesa, 
Alberoni, Eipperda, Patino, or Godoy. 

In the words of Mignet : Charles V. [I. of 
Spain] had been both a general and a king; 
Philip II. was merely a king; Philip III. and 
Philip IV. had not been kings; Charles II. was 
not even a man." 

1 For particulars of his death, see Motley, " History of 
the United Netherlands, vol. iii., ch. xxxv., p. 503. 



IX 
THE SPANIARD IN THE NETHERLANDS 

The Netherland Provinces — Manufactures — Dis- 
coveries, Commerce, Conquests, and Wealth- 
Persecution — Popular Protest — The Beggars— 
The Request — Alva's Invasion— The Council of 
Blood— Confiscations— Exodus of Inhabitants- 
Trade of the Provinces Turned to England- 
Execution of Egmont and Horn— Desolation 
Wrought by the Council of Blood— Massacres at 
Jemmingen, Mechlin, and Naarden — Alva Re- 
moved—Decamps, Leaving his Debts Unpaid 
— Requescens Governor — Siege of Leyden — 
Alexander of Parma— The Prince of Orange 
Assassinated — " A Laudable and Generous 
Deed " — Maurice of Nassau — His Victories — 
Spain Recognizes the Independence of the 
United Provinces. 

The Netherland provinces, fittingly called " The ' 
Low Countries/' including Holland and Belgium, 
had been redeemed by an industrious, hardy, and 
enterprising race from the sand-dunes of the sea- 
shore, and in part from the very bottom of the 
sea, which was kept out by mighty dikes, while 
the inhabitants cultivated their gardens and or- 

104 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 105 

chards below the level at which their ships rode 
on the surrounding waters. Vast manufacturing 
interests supplied the materials of a lucrative 
export trade, while their adventurous mariners 
brought back the riches of all lands, and made 
discoveries and conquests in America and at the 
antipodes, importing to their bleak and naturally 
barren land the tropical fruits and spices of the 
South Seas. This land of industry, wealth, enter- 
prise, and happiness, the Spanish autocrat and 
bigot, Philip the Second, calmly proceeded to 
devastate. 1 

Great numbers of the Netherlander^ had 
adopted the reformed religion. Against these 
the monarch enforced with merciless rigor the 
famous "Edict of 1550," enacted by Charles V., 
which provided that — 

"No one shall print, write, copy, keep, conceal, sell, 
buy, or give in churches, streets, or other places, any 
book or writing made by Martin Luther, John Ecolam- 
padius, Ulrich Zwinglius, Martin Bucer, John Calvin, 
or other heretics reprobated by the Holy Church ; . . . 
nor break, or otherwise injure the images of the Holy 
Virgin or canonized saints ; . . . nor in his house hold 
conventicles, or illegal gatherings, or be present at any 
such in which the adherents of the above-mentioned here- 
tics teach, baptize, and form conspiracies against the 
Holy Church and the general welfare. . . . Moreover, 
we forbid all lay persons to converse or dispute concerning 

1 Motley, vol. i., ch. i., p. 112. 



106 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

the Holy Scriptures, openly or secretly, especially on 
any doubtful or difficult matters, or to read, teach , or ex- 
pound the Scriptures, unless they have duly studied the- 
ology and been approved by some renowned university, or 
to preach secretly or openly, or to entertain any of the 
opinions of the above-mentioned heretics ; ... on pain, 
should any one be found to have contravened any of the 
points above-mentioned as perturbators of our state and 
of the general quiet, to be punished in the following 
manner : 

" That such perturbators are to be executed, to wit : the 
men with the sword, and the women to be buried alive, if 
they do not persist in their errors ; if they do persist in 
them, then they are to be executed with fire ; all their 
property in both cases being confiscated to the crown. " l 

As this was met with widespread protest, 
Philip, in 1567, let loose upon the Netherlands 
the terrible Alva. 

A haughty noble, a renowned and victorious 
general, he came at the head of ten thousand 
armed men ; of whom thirteen hundred were cav- 
alry, and the remainder the yet invincible Span- 
ish infantry. With this force marched two 
thousand prostitutes, as regularly enrolled and 
disciplined as the soldiers they accompanied, 
Alva had promised his master that he would si- 
lence all protest by cutting off the heads of all 
the refractory nobles, and that from his confisca- 
tion of estates he would cause " a stream of treas- 

1 Motley, " Rise of the Dutch Republic, " vol. i., pt. ii„ 
ch. i., p. 262. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 107 

ure a yard deep" to flow into Spain/ and assure 
him an annual income of 500,000 ducats from 
confiscations. With the true spirit of a robber- 
baron, he could see no use for the riches accumu- 
lated by peaceful industry, except as the mate- 
rials for wholesale plunder. His dull intellect 
could not perceive that when the wealth was 
swept away and the producers were exterminated 
there would be nothing that could even be stolen. 

At the very news of his coming, " the most in- 
dustrious and valuable part of the population left 
the land in droves." 2 Thousands of Flemish 
weavers settled in England, where they were cor- 
dially received, by which means the tide of com- 
merce was turned in a few years, so that England 
exported to the Netherlands the textile fabrics 
that she had formerly imported from the same 
land. At length edicts were passed forbidding 
any one to leave the country, and these were 
mercilessly enforced. 

Alva's first official act was to establish what 
he called " The Council of Troubles," better known, 
however, as the "Council of Blood" — a body 
absolutely without warrant or commission, simply 
a little junta of men informally invited to assist 
him in his work of slaughter. 

1 Motley, " Dutch Republic. " 

2 Motley, vol. ii., pt. ii., ch. x., p. 95, 



108 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

Three great nobles had been prominent in the 
opposition to Philip's measures — William, Prince 
of Orange, and the Counts Egmont and Horn. 
All had been doomed to death before Alva left 
Spain. Philip then sent them affectionate letters 
to allay all apprehensions. Orange, the favorite 
pupil of Charles the Fifth, knew too well how to 
gauge Spanish diplomacy, and withdrew into Ger- 
many; but Egmont and Horn were flattered to 
their death. Alva himself, at his coming, effu- 
sively embraced Egmont, "throwing his arm 
around the stately neck which he had already 
doomed to the block." Then Alva invited both 
the counts to a friendly little company at his own 
house, and there arrested them. All their estates 
were instantly confiscated, and after a protracted 
mockery of trial by written documents both were 
suddenly brought to the block. 

Eeduced from affluence to sudden poverty, the 
wife of Egmont, a high-born, delicately nurtured, 
and lovely woman, the daughter of emperors, had 
toiled and pleaded with pathetic earnestness and 
tenderness for her husband's release, even falling 
at the feet of Alva in humble supplication. Af- 
ter the execution Alva wrote to Philip: "The 
Countess Egmont' s condition Jills me with the 
deepest pity, burdened as she is with a family of 
eleven children, none old enough to take care of 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 109 

themselves." 1 He added that it was doubtful if 
they had enough to buy themselves a supper that 
very night, and begged the king to do something 
for the family whose rich estates he had confis- 
cated to the last penny. This stately and com- 
passionate letter might impose upon the reader 
even at this day, if we did not know that the 
writer, who expresses "the deepest pity" for the 
widow, had just rushed her husband to the scaf- 
fold in a time so brief as to make the mere 
reading of the evidence a physical impossibility, 
and had allowed (if not induced) her to believe 
the count safe, so that on the very fatal morning 
she went to comfort another lady whose husband 
she supposed to be in greater danger. 

The Blood Council wrought with terrific indus- 
try, condemning victims not one at a time, but 
thirty, forty, eighty, ninety at once on the same in- 
formation and warrant. In the words of Motley : 2 

" Thus the whole country became a charnel-house ; the 
death-bell tolled hourly in every village. . . . Columns 
and stakes in every street, the doors of private houses, the 
fences in the fields, were laden with human carcases, 
strangled, burned, beheaded. The orchards in the country 
bore on many a tree the fruit of human bodies." 

1 Prescott, "Philip the Second," vol. ii., bk. iii., ch. 
v., p. 299; Motley, "Dutch Republic," vol. ii., pt. iii., 
ch. ii., p. 212. 

2 "Dutch Republic," vol. ii., pt. iii., ch. i., p. 146. 



110 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

Alva boasted after his departure that he had 
executed 18,600 people in the Netherlands, be- 
sides all who perished by battle and massacre. 

Yet behind all this was a greater fear. State 
persecution was terrible; war was terrible; but 
even more dreadful was " the Spanish Inquisition/' 
the secret tribunal, which the Spanish monarch 
showed himself determined to fasten on the sub- 
ject provinces. The hunted burghers and villagers 
at last took up arms. Then havoc was let loose. 
The matchless veterans of Spain easily conquered 
the unwarlike citizens in battle, and slaughtered 
them in defeat as sheep were never slaughtered in 
the shambles. 

It is impossible in this sketch to do more than 
touch the story of battles and massacres extend- 
ing over more than forty years. 

At Jemmingen, in 1568, 7,000 patriot sol- 
diers, shut in upon a narrow peninsula, were mer- 
cilessly butchered. A small number, about one 
hundred, swam to an island in the stream; the 
next day, at low tide, the Spaniards waded to the 
island and slaughtered them to a man — a deed that 
has not even the poor excuse of the rage of battle. 1 

The beautiful archiepis copal city of Mechlin 
was sacked in 1572, because Alva had not money 

1 Motley, "Dutch Republic, " vol. h\, pt, iii., ch. iii., 
p. 223. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 111 

to pay his soldiers and must satisfy them by 

plunder. The historian tells us : 1 

"The property of friend and foe, of Papist and Calvin- 
ist, was indiscriminately rifled. . . . Three days long the 
horrible scene continued. . . . All the churches, monas- 
teries, religious houses of every kind, were completely 
sacked. Every valuable article which they contained, 
the ornaments of altars, the reliquaries, chalices, embroi- 
dered curtains, and carpets of velvet or damask, the golden 
robes of priests, the repositories of the host, the precious 
vessels of chrism and of extreme unction, the rich cloth- 
ing and jewelry adorning the effigies of the Holy Virgin 
— all were indiscriminately rifled by the Spanish soldiers. 
. . . The murders and outrages would be incredible, were 
they not attested by most respectable Catholic witnesses. 
Men were butchered in their houses, in the streets, at the 
altars. Women were violated by hundreds in churches 
and in graveyards. " 

Spanish conditions of surrender and promises 
of protection proved utterly worthless. The city 
of Naarden surrendered on a solemn promise of 
protection, and the trustful citizens prepared in 
their houses a sumptuous dinner for the Spanish 
troops. They were then directed to assemble in 
the great church, when the Spaniards fell upon 
them with sword and dagger, till all in the 
church were dispatched, including the magistrate 
from whose table the Spanish commandant had 
but just risen. Then followed outrage and con- 
flagration, till Naarden ceased to exist. 

1 Ibid. , vol. ii., pt. iii., ch. vii., pp. 407-411. 



112 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

"Miracles of brutality were accomplished. Neither 
church nor hearth was sacred. Men were slain, women 
outraged, at the altars, in the streets, in their blaz- 
ing homes. ... A body of some hundred burghers made 
their escape across the snow into the open country. They 
were, however, overtaken, stripped stark naked, and hung 
upon the trees by their feet, to freeze or to perish by a more 
lingering death, " l 

It is idle to say that such deeds have been the 
usual result of war, Such massacre and outrage 
did not stain the victories even of Spanish troops 
under the stony-hearted Ferdinand in the ten 
years' war against the Saracens of Granada. The 
Spaniards had progressed, not in refinement, but 
in barbarity, Nor has any other nation — what- 
ever sudden excesses may have been committed — 
kept up an unremitting series of such atrocities 
against the unresisting and helpless for a period 
of forty years. 

Desperate at length with insult and outrage, 
the women of the Netherlands laid aside the 
gentler instincts of their sex, and in every siege 
stood beside their fathers, husbands, and brothers 
on the ramparts, poured boiling water and scald- 
ing pitch on the mail-clad invaders, or flung 
hoops, wound with rags dipped in melted pitch 
and tar and set on fire, round the necks of their 

1 Motley, "Dutch Eepublic, " vol. ii., pt. iii., ch. viii., 

p. 422 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 113 

assailants ; glad, if the city fell, to be recognized 
only as combatants, and fall beside their dear 
ones by the undis criminating sword. Often they 
turned the tide of battle, till a Netherland ram- 
part became impossible for even Spanish valor to 
scale. 

Alva was recalled in 1573. This Spanish 
duke and governor-general departed secretly by 
night, leaving his vast personal debts unpaid and 
the finances of the provinces exhausted. 

Under the rule of Alva's successor, Eequescens, 
in 1574, occurred the woful but glorious siege of 
Leyden, whose unwarlike burghers held out four 
months against all that the picked troops of 
Spain could do. Meantime the Prince of Orange 
broke down the dikes far and wide, circle within 
circle, while the starving people of Leyden pain- 
fully climbed the high tower that overlooked the 
city and plain, to watch wistfully through the 
hot summer days for the incoming of the North 
Sea, so slow to reclaim its ancient right. At 
length, in October, the equinoctial gale, driving 
from the west, piled the water on the shore of 
Holland; the Netherland fleet sailed in, fighting 
and defeating the Spanish ships amid the boughs 
of the apple-trees and the chimneys of the houses 
of inundated farms and villages. Along wet and 
oozy causeways, fast undermined, the Spanish 
8 



114 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

army fled before the resistless sea and the venge- 
ful, slaughtering Zealand sailors, and Leyden was 
saved. Soldiers, sailors, and citizens crowded to 
the great church to give thanks to the God of sea 
and of land and of battles, and when they sought 
to join in a song of thanksgiving, strong men, 
with the women and children, broke down in a 
passion of tumultuous weeping. 

At last, the unremitting war had turned the 
peaceful burghers into soldiers of wonderful en- 
durance and courage ; it had developed the Dutch 
fleet into a victorious power on the sea; while 
the Prince of Orange held the people united by 
the power of his personal character, and foiled 
the redoubted Parma with a generalship equal to 
his own. 

Philip and Parma then determined to advertise 
for the killing of the unconquerable hero — the 
Washington of Holland, and one of the purest 
patriots of any age — as if he had been a high- 
wayman or a mad dog. In 1581 a royal procla- 
mation was issued, promising 25,000 crowns in 
gold to any one who would capture or kill him, 
with the added promise: 

" If he [the assassin] have committed any crime, however 
heinous, we promise to pardon him ; and if he be not al- 
ready noble, we will ennoble him for his valor. " 

It is to be doubted if such an undisguised ap- 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 115 

peal to the worst of the criminal class was ever 
before or since issued by a civilized government. 
The appeal soon bore fruit in attempts upon the 
life of Orange. At last, on the 10th of July, 1584, 
a poor fanatic, Balthazar Gerard, shot the prince 
in the back with a pistol purchased with money 
which the prince had given him to relieve his 
apparent poverty. The murdered hero's last words 
were : " God, have mercy on my soul ! God, 
have mercy on this poor people!" The people for 
whom his life had been given were his last care 
in death. 

The renowned general, Alexander of Parma, 
wrote to Philip to recommend the payment of 
the reward which "the laudable and generous 
deed had so well deserved. " l Such was the idea 
which a Spanish governor-general entertained of 
what is "laudable and generous"! The mind is 
fairly stunned by such perversion of language, 
picturing a corresponding falsification of all the 
noblest instincts of the soul. 

The wretched assassin was executed with hor- 
rible torture by the infuriated people ; but Philip 
enrolled the criminal's father and mother among 
the proud nobility of Spain, and paid them the 
equivalent of the promised reward out of the con- 
flscated estates of the murdered Orange. 

1 Motley, "Dutch Republic, " vol. iii., p. 613. 



116 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

Not even assassination could now, however, 
roll back the tide of freedom. Spain had brought 
the Netherland people to that pass where death 
had become the least disaster that millions at 
once had to fear. At that point tyranny is al- 
ways foiled. The youthful son of Orange, Mau- 
rice of Nassau, grandson on his mother's side of 
Maurice of Saxony, arose to avenge his father's 
death, with less than his father's statesmanship, 
but with more of soldierly and conquering power. 
At Zutphen, Deventer, Nimeguen, Gertruyden- 
berg, and Groningen, and on the stricken fields 
of Turnhout and Nieuport, his burghers defeated 
the picked and veteran troops of Spain, till in 
1609, by "The Twelve Years' Truce," Spain her- 
self was compelled to acknowledge the United 
Netherland Provinces as a free republic. 1 In 
spite of all that Spanish force, fraud, and barbar- 
ity could do, the Netherlands had built the first 
great bulwark of modern constitutional freedom. 

1 Motley, "United Netherlands," vol. iv., ch. lii., p. 
526. 



X 

THE SPANIARD IN THE PHILIPPINES 

Situation of the Islands — Volcanoes and Earth- 
quakes — Discovery and Conquest — Area and Pop- 
ulation—Productions — Commerce — The City of 
Manila — Wealth — Education — Taxation — Rea- 
sons for Revolt— Compared with Hawaii. 

Situated between the China Sea and the 
Pacific Ocean, the Philippine Islands form the 
northern part of the Eastern Archipelago, and 
comprise more than two thousand islands, which 
range in size from mere reefs to vast lands of 
over forty thousand square miles in extent. 
These islands lie wholly within the tropics, and 
extend southward nearly to the equator; they 
are essentially mountainous and subject to de- 
structive volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. 

The Philippines were discovered, March 12, 
1521, by Magellan, who was soon after killed in 
a skirmish with the natives. In 1543 a Spanish 
commander, Villalobos, sailing from Mexico, visit- 
ed and renamed the group in honor of the Prince of 
Asturias, afterward Philip II. The group was 

117 



118 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

officially annexed to Spain in 1569. The city of 
Manila was founded on the island of Luzon in 
1571, and became the capital of the Philippine 
Islands. Thereafter the surrounding islands were 
rapidly reduced, the Spaniards sparing neither fire 
nor sword. The petty Malay chiefs were made 
governors for the benefit of the Spanish crown. 

The area of the Philippine Archipelago is 
115,000 square miles. The chief islands are 
nine in number, and comprise Luzon, with an 
area of 40,885 square miles; Mindanao or Ma- 
gindanao, 37,256 square miles; Samar, Panay, 
Mindord, Leyte, Cebu, Negros, and Bohol. Lu- 
zon, by far the most important island of the 
group, has upwards of 4,000,000 inhabitants. 
The total number of inhabitants of the group has 
been placed between 7,500,000 and 9,000,000. 
The natives are mostly of the Malayan race, but 
there are a large number of Chinese, some tribes of 
Negritos, and a small resident Spanish population, 
estimated at less than 8,000 persons. The Ne- 
gritos, a savage people, were probably the abo- 
rigines, but very few of them remain, these being 
scattered over the land in the forests and moun- 
tains, to which they withdrew on the approach of 
the invading Malayans. 

The chief products are hemp, sugar, coffee, 
copra, tobacco-leaf, cigars, and indigo, and the 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 



119 



„. qT °) Kijn-Chaiig ^~~ 

KIANG- Nl ^[ 1 ? V^<>> 




Bormay i Co,, £«yr' », A\ 1\ 



120 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

total value of the exports is placed at $30,500,000 
per annum. Tropical fruits and vegetables 
abound. The islands are covered with immense 
forests of ebony and ironwood, japan-wood, cedar 
and gum trees, which furnish timber, dyewoods, 
and gums. 

Most of the commerce of the islands is carried 
on by Americans, English, and Germans. The 
chief minerals are coal and iron; there are also 
some copper, lead, gold, sulphur, cinnabar, quick- 
silver, and alum, but these resources are but im- 
perfectly developed, and mining is carried on only 
in the most primitive way. 

The city of Manila, situated at the mouth of 
the Pasig Eiver on the Bay of Manila, is a bus- 
tling port, with a population of 270,000. The 
city proper is built on the left bank of the river, 
and consists of a group of forts, convents, and 
administrative buildings. It has seventeen wide 
streets, about a dozen churches, and three convents. 
Across the river lies Binondo, a suburb reached by 
two fine bridges, which is much larger and far 
more animated than the city where the Spanish 
population dwells. This is probably due to the 
fact that Binondo is the residential center of all 
foreign merchants. Here Germans, Americans, 
French, and English may be frequently met. 

As a commercial center, Manila holds an envi- 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 121 

able position, situated on the mouth of a navi- 
gable river, which is connected with the ports on 
the opposite or eastern side of the island by a 
canal, and on the shores of an enormous bay, over 
one hundred and twenty miles in circumference, 
which forms a fine natural harbor protected from 
the highest tides of the monsoon by a sandy bar, 
called " the Hook. " The Philippines are among the 
richest and most fertile islands in the world. The 
amount of gold in money sent annually to Spain 
by those in official position there is enormous, 
but, large as this is, it is exceeded by the sum 
sent to China by Chinese traders, who practically 
alone handle the retail trade of the colony. At- 
tempts to develop the vast natural resources of 
the islands have never been seriously made. 
Education, which, as in Spain, is said to be com- 
pulsory, has been systematically neglected. The 
number of literates among the natives is lamen- 
tably small, the determined purpose being to keep 
them in ignorance, and thus in a measure assure 
their dependence. Some form of instruction is 
administered by sectarian societies. On account 
of this criminal neglect the wealthier classes are 
compelled to send their children abroad to be edu- 
cated, and they come back determined to be free. 
The causes of the constant unrest of the native 
population are well stated by Dr. C. Worcester, 



122 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

Dean of the University of Michigan, in an article 
in the New York Independent : 

"Extreme poverty is the rule among the civilized na- 
tives, and its cause is found in the heavy burden of taxa- 
tion imposed upon them by their Spanish masters. Every 
person over eighteen years of age is required to procure an- 
nually a credula personal, or document of identification, the 
charge for which varies from $1.50 to $25, according to the 
means of the applicant. Should these sums seem insig- 
nificant, it must be remembered that the average native 
has little or no opportunity to work for hire ; that if he does 
succeed in securing employment his wages are often no 
more than five cents a day, and that he is usually unable 
to dispose of his farm products for cash, being compelled 
to exchange them for other commodities. In addition to 
this personal tax there is a tax on coconut-trees, a tax on 
beasts of burden, a tax on killing animals for food, a tax 
for keeping a shop, a tax on mills or oil-presses, a tax on 
weights and measures, a tax on cock-fighting, and so on 
to the end of the chapter. At every turn the poor native 
finds himself face to face with the dire necessity of paying 
tributo ; and he frequently spends his life in an ineffectual 
effort to meet the obligations thus imposed. 

" Delinquent taxpayers are treated with the utmost sever- 
ity. The first step is usually to strip them to the waist, 
tie them to a bench or post, and beat them unmercifully. 
I have seen women subjected to this treatment. If this 
does not suffice, imprisonment follows, while pressure is 
brought to bear on relatives and friends. Should none of 
these methods prove effective, deportation follows, with 
confiscation of property and the leaving of women and 
children to shift for themselves. 

"I once saw forty-four men deported from Siquijor be- 
cause they owed taxes varying in amount from two to 
forty dollars. I was informed that they would be allowed 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 123 

to return to their families, if they could find them, after 
working out the amount of their several debts. The 
wages allowed them were to be six cents a day. Board 
was to be furnished them at a cost of five cents a day, 
and they were to clothe and shelter themselves ! In other 
words, their sentence amounted to deportation for life. 

"The governor-general is surrounded by a numerous 
corps of officials to aid him in the performance of his du- 
ties, while the islands are divided into provinces, over 
each of which preside a governor and a horde of minor 
officials. The whole administration is rotten from skin 
to core. With few exceptions, these officials have come from 
Spain with the deliberate and frankly expressed intention 
of improving their pecuniary status. . . . Certain it is 
that few Philippine governors grow wealthy out of their 
salaries. 

"Hostility toward foreigners is intense. The extensive 
export and import trade of the islands is in the hands of 
foreign houses, to the great disgust of the Spanish, who 
never weary in their attempts to frame legislation for the 
ruin of these money -making interlopers. 

" Naturally the Philippine native is a peaceable, easy-go- 
ing fellow. Under a decent form of government he would 
give little trouble. No one familiar with existing condi- 
tions can doubt that Spanish rule has been a curse to these 
islands, and it would be a happy day for them should some 
civilized power take possession of them. " 

Undoubtedly the control of a vast, mixed, and 
half- civilized population would be a serious prob- 
lem for any nation. 

But the Spaniard fails to grasp the only key to 
the situation — the policy of hoMing the con- 
quered territory for the benefit of the conquered 
people, as well as of the new settlers — of making 



124 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

the whole people prosperous and happy on their 
own soil, and convincing them that they owe this 
increased prosperity and happiness to the foreign 
administration or occupation. By this policy, 
any land can be conquered, and without it no 
land can be peacefully and permanently held. 
Governments derive not only "their just powers," 
but all their really effective powers, "from the 
consent of the governed." 

In 1820 American missionaries went without 
soldier, musket, cannon, or beat of drum to the 
Hawaiian Islands; with no attempt at coercion 
they taught the natives the Christian faith. 
They labored honestly to make the people pos- 
sessors of every blessing of a higher civilization. 
Their sons became, by sheer force of character, 
first the virtual, and now the recognized rulers of 
the islands. American settlers have joined them, 
seeking, often selfishly, but always intelligently, 
to develop the internal riches of the land. Bail- 
roads have been built. The telegraph and tele- 
phone are everywhere. Lines of fine, swift 
steamers ply from port to port, in the inter- island 
trade. Free schools are everywhere established 
and education is steadily advancing. Now the 
whole people are pleading to come under the pro- 
tection of the American flag. This in less than 
a century. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 125 

Spain has held the Philippines by armed occupa- 
tion for four hundred and fifty years, seeking to 
wring from the people all that rigorous and ruin- 
ous taxation can extort, while giving them none 
of the benefits of higher civilization. She has 
now not an ounce of power outside the range of 
her guns. The natives, once comparatively peace- 
ful, have become savage and cruel under Spanish 
oppression. 

Some nation with the true genius of coloni- 
zation should control the islands. The United 
States would do well — not from greed of empire, 
but as trustees of seven millions of people — to 
take possession of the group, relieve the inhabi- 
tants from the Spanish system of spoliation and 
oppression, develop their agricultural, mineral, 
and commercial resources, introduce a broad and 
enlightened system of government and education, 
and make the islands the Hawaii of the Orient. 



XI 



THE SPANIARD IN CUBA 

Description of the Island — Its Area — Its Mineral 
and Agricultural Resources— Its History Con- 
trasted with that of English Colonies— The Brit- 
ish Capture of Havana — Permanent Gain to 
Cuban Trade — Spanish Captains-General— Elec- 
tions a Farce — Elected Councilors Removable 
by the Captain-General— Peninsulars— Creoles- 
Wasted Revenues— Oppressive Taxation — Revolt 
and Subjugation — The Reconcentrados — Weyler 
"Thinks Himself Merciful" —The Experiment 
of Inhumanity Must Cease. 

The island of Cuba is 760 miles in extreme 
length, about 30 miles in average breadth, and 
135 miles in the widest part. Its area is some 
45,880 square miles, almost equal to that of Eng- 
land (50,800 square miles), and a little larger 
than the State of Pennsylvania (45,215 square 
miles). It lies just within the tropics, 90 miles 
from the mainland of Florida. Its productions 
include almost every description of natural wealth. 
Its fertile plains could furnish the sugar-supply 
of the world. Cuban tobacco has no rival. In 
the mountains lie the precious metals, scarce re- 

126 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 127 

vealed as yet, together with copper and the rich- 
est of iron ore. In the short interval of peace, 
coffee-plantations have proved immensely profit- 
able. 

For nearly three centuries the history of Cuba 
differs little from that of the neighboring Spanish 
colonies. The native population was enslaved, 
and within the first century was practically ex- 
terminated. Negroes were brought from Africa 
as slaves, and now form about one third of the 
population. 

The first notable change came in 1762 when 
the English, then at war with Spain, captured 
Havana. Had they held Cuba, her later troubles 
might have been averted. Meanwhile, under 
their rule, Havana had been for the first time 
opened to foreign trade, and could not be again 
brought under the old restrictions. 

In the lands colonized by the English in the 
New World, four centuries have produced a wealth 
of history. There are dark pages ; but the greater 
part is a record of unequaled development of 
resources. The list of statesmen, inventors, and 
great workers in every industry is a long one, in 
any of our States. The bare granite hills of New 
England and the desert plains of Colorado have 
alike yielded wealth to the race whose industry, 
enterprise, and thrift refused to be denied. Cuba, 



128 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

naturally rich, beautiful, and fertile, has but the 
record of wasted resources. 

The history of Spanish rule in Cuba is but the 
history of every other Spanish dependency, only 
enacted a little nearer our own shores. There is 
the ceaseless armed occupation, never let up one 
moment for four hundred years, except when the 
British or French were temporarily in control. 
So far from seeking to make the island self- 
sustaining, there has been a determined purpose 
not to suffer it to become so. The island has 
been ruled by a governor-general from Madrid, 
in whose appointment the people have had no 
voice. Elections, since the form has been granted, 
have been so perverted as to be a mere farce. 
Yet, lest a popular majority should ever be chosen, 
a cunningly devised machinery enables the gov- 
ernor-general to remove the majority of the coun- 
cilors at his pleasure. Office, civil or military, 
is only for men born on the soil of Spain, ex- 
pressively termed " Peninsulars. " If a Spaniard of 
the best blood in Spain becomes a planter or other- 
wise settles in Cuba, his children are "Creoles," 
shut out of the official and governing class. Thus 
Spain treats her own sons as foreigners, and so 
makes them enemies, for none hate Spanish rule 
more intensely than men of Spanish blood born 
on Cuban soil. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 129 

Cuba is held for Spanish grandees and hidalgos, 
to make that living by civil and military office 
which they scorn to make by work. They ad- 
minister Cuban affairs, not for the benefit of 
Cubans — whom they hate and despise — but with 
the single motive of getting money to spend at 
court, or somewhere on the soil of Spain ; and so 
successfully do they prosecute this industry that 
an average term of three years accomplishes their 
purpose. Of $35,000,000 of annual revenue col- 
lected in Cuba, almost all is carried to Spain, in- 
stead of being spent for education, roads, railways, 
telegraphs, and other aids to progress, as has been 
so intelligently done at the Cape of Good Hope, in 
Australia, and other English colonies. To exact 
this revenue without equivalent, taxes are imposed 
upon the Cubans, under which agriculture and 
commerce wither and perish, while manufactures 
are an undreamed-of possibility. 

At the first moment of conscious strength 
the Cubans revolt. Soldiers and officers are sent 
from Spain to suppress the revolt, and for their 
maintenance such of the islanders as are not ex- 
terminated in the "pacification" — which is the 
Spanish for subjugation — must pay. Thus every 
attempt at freedom makes the iron bondage 
harder. 

The present revolt began with the landing in 
9 



130 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

Cuba of Jose Marti, as head of a provisional gov- 
ernment, and Maximo Gomez, as general-in-chief, 
in February, 1895. During the three years, 
Spain has sent to the island 140,000 regular 
troops and enrolled 60,000 volunteers. Of the 
regulars, more than 25,000 have died, and at least 
15,000 are in hospital. The insurgents number 
about 25,000 armed men, maintaining a guerilla 
warfare. The feature of this war which has 
eclipsed all others in intense and painful interest, 
has been the reconcentrado system enforced by 
General Weyler, by which five or six hundred 
thousand non-combatants, chiefly women and 
children, driven from rural homes into the towns, 
and corralled there by Spanish bayonets, were left 
to starve in full sight of the soldiers and officers 
who are called chivalrous and brave, while not 
an armed man ate one ration the less, till four 
hundred thousand of the victims had died before 
America interposed. 

The following table of statistics was published 
on the 16th of February of the present year in 
The Christian Herald, whose editor, Dr. Klopsch, 
did such devoted service in the attempt at 
rescue : 

"Nearly Half a Million Dead of Famine. 

"These statistics of Cuba's hunger-plague are furnished 
by Mr. Sylvester Scovel, now in Cuba, and are drawn 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 131 

from official and other sources. They are entirely reli- 
able. 

Normal population of Cuba 1,600,000 

Cubans living out of Cuba during the 

war 100,000 

Cuban insurgents and their families in 

the field 270,000 

370,000 

Number of "concentrados" in forti- 

fied towns 1, 230,000 

"Reconcentrados" brought into towns 

(now dead) 380,000 

Lower classes of townspeople (dead) . . . 100, 000 
Estimated number dead of starvation. . . 480,000 

Alive in the towns of Cuba to-day. 750,000 

" These figures are wholly outside of losses sustained by 
the war. " 

In such a record, we see the same race that 
slaughtered unarmed men and helpless women by 
thousands in Netherland cities, faithful to its 
ancestral traditions, coming down the ages un- 
reformed and unrepenting. Most striking is it 
to find that even now the Spaniards can not see 
that they have done anything wrong. Captain- 
General Weyler, in an interview published in 
The Daily Telegraph, said, when asked if he had 
been cruel: 

" I don't know. I don't trouble to consider. I am a mili- 
tary man and do not live for myself, but for my country. 
I was sent to make tear upon the rebels, and I did this, and 
neither more nor less than this. . . . 

"I am old-fashioned enough to think myself merciful. 
I was rigorous, just, and resolute. I had a problem to 
solve by the rules of military science. I have earned the 



132 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

hatred and provoked the curses of the sworn enemies of 
Spain ; but it will never cause me a bad night's sleep." 

This shutting up defenseless women and chil- 
dren between lines of bayonets, to die of hunger 
before the eyes of well-fed troopers, as no Ameri- 
can would corral cattle, is the idea that a Spanish 
captain-general of the nineteenth century has of 
" making war" ! In doing this he " thinks himself 
merciful " ! 

And not only Weyler, but comparatively mild- 
tempered men like Blanco and Sagasta, can see 
no reason why any one should interfere, and re- 
gard any claim of humanity on the part of the 
people of the United States as absurd affecta- 
tion. Yet a tithe of what Spain is now spending 
for war in behalf of oppression would have fed 
all these unfortunates, and averted all the misery 
and lingering death. This obtuseness of in- 
humanity is the last - count in the indictment of 
Spanish rule. The men who are capable of doing 
this, and incapable of seeing the wrong of it, are 
not to be trusted to govern any subject popula- 
tion. No system of "autonomy" which they are 
to administer and interpret would have any value. 

As .a colonizer, Spain has had the ample trial 
of centuries, and been wofully found wanting. It 
only remains to decree that she shall perform her 
bloody experiments on human nature no more. 



XII 

THE SPANIARD ON THE SEA 

Spain's Advantages as a Sea-power. — Early Suc- 
cesses of Aragon. — Battle of Lepanto. — Spanish 
and Dutch Vessels Compared.— Effect of National 
Character on Maritime Ascendency. — Victory of 
Van Tromp.— The Armada. — The British Outsail 
the Spaniards. — The Spaniards Shoot Wild and 
High.— British Shots at the Water Line. — The 
Spaniards Retreat to Calais.— English Fire-Ships. 
— The Dutch keep Parma Blockaded,— The Ar- 
mada Retreats through the North Sea. — Battle 
of Manila. — Admiral Dewey's Official Account. — 
National dualities Contrasted. 

Spain's extensive seacoast and excellent har- 
bors, her commanding position, with the Atlantic 
on one side and the Mediterranean, open to all 
the rich trade of Italy and the Levant, on the 
other, with her colonies in the New World and 
in the Orient, should have made her the greatest 
sea-power of modern times. 

While still a separate kingdom, and in hot con- 
flict with the Saracens for mere existence, the 
little mountainous and maritime state of Aragon 
133 



134 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

had maintained a lucrative commerce and won 
important naval successes. 

In the great battle of Lepanto, in 1571, in con- 
junction with the Venetians, Genoese, and sol- 
diers of the Papal States, the Spaniards anni- 
hilated the Turkish fleet, but they have never 
been fortunate in naval contests with the Ger- 
manic races. Against these, the English and 
the Dutch, they were brought to measure them- 
selves in the latter part of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, and always disastrously. 

Mahan, in his great work, "The Influence of 
Sea-Power upon History," clearly shows how the 
national character of the Spaniards was responsi- 
ble for the decline of their power at sea. 1 

"If history may be believed, the way in which the 
Spaniards . . . sought wealth not only brought a blot 
upon the national character, but was also fatal to the 
growth of a healthy commerce. . . . The desire for gain 
rose in them to fierce avarice ; so they sought in the new- 
found worlds . . . not new fields of industry, not even 
the healthy excitement of exploration and adventure, but 
gold and silver. They had many great qualities ; they 
were bold, enterprising, temperate, patient of suffering, 
enthusiastic, and gifted with intense national feeling. 
. . . [Yet] since the battle of Lepanto in 1571, though 
engaged in many wars, no sea- victory of any consequence 
shines on the pages of Spanish history ; and the decay of 
her commerce sufficiently accounts for the painful and 

»Ch. ii., pp. 50-53. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 135 

sometimes ludicrous inaptness shown on the decks of her 
ships of war. " 

The English and Dutch had pursued a different 
course. Of them the writer above quoted says : x 

" These two nations . . . were by nature business men, 
traders, producers, negotiators. Therefore both in their 
native country and abroad, whether settled in the ports of 
evil i zed nations, or of barbarous Eastern rulers, or in 
colonies of their own foundation, they everywhere strove 
to draw out all the resources of the land, to develop and in- 
crease them. The quick instinct of the born trader, shop- 
keeper if you will, sought continually new articles to 
exchange ; and this search, combined with the industrious 
character evolved through generations of labor, made them 
necessarily producers. At home, they became great as 
manufacturers ; abroad, where they controlled, the land 
grew richer continually, products multiplied, and the nec- 
essary exchange between home and the settlements called 
for more ships. . . . Thus in many ways they advanced 
to power at sea. 

" The tendency to trade, involving of necessity the pro- 
duction of something to trade with, is the national charac- 
teristic most important to the development of sea-power. " 

In 1639, the Dutch admiral, Van Tromp, the 
same who afterward sailed the English Channel 
with a broom at his masthead in token that he 
had swept the seas, defeated a powerful Spanish 
fleet in the Straits of Dover. The Spanish ships 
numbered sixty-seven, many carrying from sixty 
to one hundred guns, under the command of Ad- 

iCh. ii., pp. 52, 53. 



136 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

miral Oquendo, while Van Tromp at the beginning 
of the action had but sixteen vessels under his com- 
mand ; reinforced, he again attacked the Spaniards, 
who cut their cables to escape. Many were driven 
ashore, and almost all were captured or sunk, and 
the Spanish navy was practically destroyed. 

In 1588 occurred the great life-and-death 
wrestle between England and Spain in the de- 
scent upon the English coasts of what the Span- 
iards fondly termed "the Invincible Armada." 
On Saturday, July 30th, the Armada, in a great 
crescent, seven miles between the horns, entered 
the English Channel. It numbered upward of 
130 ships, of 59,120 tons in all, and carrying 
3,165 guns. It contained 64 galleons, "huge, 
round-stemmed, clumsy vessels, with bulwarks 
three or four feet thick, and built up at stem and 
stern like castles," each rowed by 300 galley- 
slaves. There were four galeasses, even larger 
than the galleys, with cannon between the rowers' 
benches, and with splendid state apartments 
and every appointment of ostentatious luxury. 
The fleet carried about 30,000 men, including 
19,000 Spanish troops, 8,000 sailors, and 2,000 
galley-slaves; also, a force of noble volun- 
teers of the most illustrious houses in Spain, 
numbering with their attendants upward of 2,000. 
There were besides, nearly 300 monks, priests, 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 137 

and familiars under charge of the vicar-general 
of the Inquisition, who were to set up that dread 
tribunal in conquered England. The fleet carried 
provisions and supplies to sustain forty thousand 
men for four months, with a vast amount of am- 
munition for small-arms, but with only sixty 
charges for each cannon, which had evidently 
been deemed sufficient to finish the English fleet. 
To oppose this force, the English had but 67 
ships, but these were under the command of 
Howard, Drake, Frobisher, and Hawkins. In the 
calm night of the 30th while the Spanish fleet 
lay in wait off Plymouth, the English ships slipped 
out of harbor into the open sea behind it. There, 
with a fresh west wind astern, they refused all at- 
tempts of the Spaniards to force a general action : 

"The high-towered, broad-bowed galleons moved like 
Thames barges piled with hay, while the sharp, low Eng- 
lish sailed at once two feet to the Spaniards' one, and shot 
away as if by magic in the eye of the wind. It was as if 
a modern steam-fleet was engaged with a squadron of old- 
fashioned three-deckers, choosing their own distance, and 
fighting or not fighting, as suited their convenience. " 

Soon, Howard's flagship, the Ark Raleigh, 
with three other vessels, sailed along the whole 
rear line of the Armada, firing into each galleon 
as they passed, then returning on the same track, 

^roude, "History of England, " vol. xii., ch. xxxvi., 
p. 482. 



138 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

pouring in broadsides from the other side. The 
Spanish fired wildly and high, their shot scarcely 
touching the English fleet, while their own great 
ships, being at leeward and leaning over to the 
wind, exposed their hulls below the water-line, 
where the English shot went crashing through. 

The Armada gave up the contest and moved up 
the Channel, huddled together in disorder with 
the rising wind, in the rough, rolling sea. Foul- 
ing each other, one of their most important ships 
was damaged and left to her fate. From this 
capture and another that soon followed, the Eng- 
lish obtained some tons of gunpowder, of which 
the parsimony of Elizabeth had kept her ships 
desperately short. 

The running fight went on with scarcely any 
injury to the English, but with heavy losses on 
the Spanish side, as the Spaniards still fired wild 
and high, while the English sent their shots 
crashing through the four feet of timber which 
had been meant for protection, killing and wound- 
ing more by splinters than by shot. The Span- 
ish admiral, Medina- Sidonia, at length withdrew 
before the enemy that he could not touch, and 
on Saturday came to anchor at Calais Eoads, and 
sent to Captain-General Parma, in the Nether- 
lands, for assistance. His letter is fairly piteous: 

" The enemy pursue me, " he writes. They fire on me 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 139 

most days from morning till nightfall, but they will not 
close and grapple. . . . They have men and ammunition 
in abundance, while these actions have almost consumed 
ours. " l 

Yet .at that very time Howard had but five 
scanty dinners and one breakfast left for his hard- 
worked men, and powder sufficient for but one 
day's fighting. He must act or be driven from 
the sea by starvation. On the night of Sunday, 
August 7th, eight of the least valuable ships of 
the volunteer fleet that accompanied him were 
filled with combustibles, the rigging smeared with 
pitch, while English crews took the ships through 
the darkness down close to the crowded Spanish 
fleet, set fire to them, and left them to drift down 
with the tide upon the enemy, trusting them- 
selves to escape in boats. As the dark hulks, 
that had been dimly seen, suddenly burst into 
flame, an indescribable panic took place among 
the Spanish fleet. The ships cut or slipped their 
cables, and hurried in confusion out to sea. 
There Howard and Drake fell upon them, still 
with the same swift sailing and deadly marks- 
manship, till in the Spanish fleet — 

"the middle decks were turned into slaughter-houses, and 
in one ship blood was seen streaming from the lee-scup- 
pers. Their guns were most of them dismounted or 

! Froude, "History of England," vol. xii., ch. xxxvi., 
p. 492. 



140 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

knocked in pieces, and their chief work was to save them- 
selves from sinking by nailing sheets of lead over the shot- 
holes." 1 

The Armada was driven toward Ostend, ships 
being constantly sunk or driven ashore, while the 
English paused for no captures, for their orders 
were to "sink or destroy." 

Despairing of help, thoroughly beaten at last by 
the superior seamanship and marksmanship of the 
English, with four thousand men drowned or shot 
to death, and an uncounted number of wounded, 
the Armada sailed away through the North Sea 
in the attempt to return to Spain by way of the 
Orkneys. 

With unseaworthy vessels, in an unknown 
and dangerous sea, storm finished what battle 
had begun, and but fifty-four vessels, shattered 
and leaking through every seam, and less than 
ten thousand men, weak, wretched, and pestilence- 
smitten, reached, some time in October, the coast 
of Spain. 

Through the summer the Spanish people had 
been assured that the Armada had won great vic- 
tories; that "the great dog, Sir Francis Drake," 
was a prisoner in chains ; and there were bonfires 
and rejoicings in the cities of Spain. The fact 

1 Froude, " English History, " vol. xii. , ch. xxxvi. , p. 
504. 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 141 

of the awful defeat with the loss of the best and 
bravest of the land fell upon the nation with 
crushing force. 

The great battle of the seas had been fought 
and won, not alone for England, but for civiliza- 
tion and for the world. As whelming surge and 
battering cannon drove the Armada in wreck 
through the North Sea, England and Spain 
swung apart forever to opposite destinies, and the 
English character, English manufactures, com- 
merce, and conquests, English enlightenment, 
literature, and constitutional freedom — which 
are also the glorious heritage of our American 
republic — were saved from the blighting touch of 
Spanish domination. The same qualities that 
gave the English the victory over the Spanish 
Armada were shown when, in 1587, Sir Francis 
Drake, with thirty ships, ran the batteries at the 
mouth of the harbor of Cadiz, defeated the Span- 
ish war-ships, and destroyed their richly laden 
transports in their own waters ; when again in 
1718, the Spanish navy was destroyed by Byng off 
Cape Passaro, and yet more signally when Nel- 
son defeated the combined French and Spanish 
fleets at Trafalgar in 1805. 

Now, though it is yet too early to predict the 
results of the Cuban war, the Anglo-Saxon, as 
represented by the American Eepublic, has sig- 



142 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

nally triumphed over the power of Spain once 
more in the far East. Thousands of miles from 
any base of supplies, with no place of retreat in 
case of disaster, Commodore, now Admiral George 
Dewey, on the night of April 30, 1898, with all 
lights out, and men at the guns, steamed past the 
batteries guarding the mouth of Manila Bay, and 
there, on the still waters, allowed his men to 
sleep quietly till daybreak beside their guns. 
The Spanish fleet, superior in numbers but about 
equal in armament, lay under the protection of 
powerful shore-batteries. With daylight, in 
perfect silence the ships moved into action, till, 
as Spanish shells exploded near, a shout went up, 
caught from ship to ship, " Eemember the Maine!" 
Having made five runs along the Spanish line, 
Admiral Dewey, with wonderful calmness and 
self-possession, drew away at the end of two 
hours' firing to give breakfast to his w r earied men, 
who had been working on merely a single cup of 
coffee each, served out before the action began. 

It was then that the Spaniards, as in the 
Armada days, but with the telegraph now to ex- 
pedite the news, sent home that report of victory 
that brought tears to the eyes of the Spanish 
minister of marine in Madrid. 

At ten minutes of eleven o'clock, the signal for 
close action again went up, and the American 



THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 143 

line, the Baltimore leading now, advanced upon 
the Spanish fleet, the renewed firing beginning 
at sixteen minutes past eleven. As the Spanish 
fire slackened, the light-draft American vessels 
steamed closer in, the little Petrel running to 
within a thousand yards. The Spanish flagship, 
the Eeina Cristina, and the Castilla had long been 
burning; others, including the Don Antonio de 
Ulloa, had been sunk, the shore batteries silenced, 
and at half past twelve o'clock a white flag was 
hoisted on the arsenal staff at Cavit£. The total 
result is briefly and simply told in the official 
despatches of Admiral Dewey : 

" Manila, May 1st. 
" The squadron arrived at Manila at daybreak this morn- 
ing. Immediately engaged the enemy and destroyed the 
following Spanish vessels : Reina Cristina, Costilla, Ulloa, 
Isla de Cuba, General Lozo, the Duero, Correo, Velasco, 
Mindanao, one transport, and the water battery at Cavite. 
The squadron is uninjured, and only a few men were 
sightly wounded. The only means of telegraphing is to 
the American consul at Hongkong. I shall communi- 
cate with him. Dewey. " 

" Cavite, May 4th. . 
"I have taken possession of naval station at Cavite, on 
Philippine Islands. Have destroyed the fortifications at 
bay entrance, paroling garrison. I control bay com- 
pletely and can take city at any time. The squadron in 
excellent health and spirits. Spanish loss not fully 
known, but very heavy. One hundred and fifty killed, 



144 THE SPANIARD IN HISTORY 

including captain of Reina Cristina. I am assisting in 
protecting Spanish sick and wounded. Two hundred and 
fifty-six wounded in hospitals within our lines. Much 
excitement at Manila. Will protect foreign residents. 

" Dewey. " 

This wonderful achievement of the storming 
of an enemy's harbor, with not a ship lost nor 
a man killed, and but seven slightly wounded, 
while the enemy's loss was so heavy in ships 
and men, can only be accounted for, as in 
the victory of the English over the Armada, by 
the admirable maneuvering and marksmanship of 
the American fleet, joined with the phenomenal 
inaccuracy of the Spanish gunners. 

The continual defeats of the Spaniards on the 
sea are thus the outcome of all their history. A 
nation that persistently despises and destroys 
those industrial and mechanical pursuits that 
train eye, hand, and nerve to steadiness and 
accuracy through generations, can not prosecute 
successfully even its cherished vocation of war — 
especially when, as now, war becomes a contest 
of instruments of precision. But it appears also 
clear that modern war, though using mechanism, 
is not to be mechanical. Still, as of old, the 
national and personal characters of the men that 
wield the weapons are the factors that determine 
victory. 



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